Time: 10:00-11:30, Feb 9, 2015

Venue: Room 506, Museum for Aquatic Organisms

Speaker: Dr. Sunja CHO

Title: Nitrogen recovery and Microalgae-biotechnology

Introduction to the Lecture: 

The development of microalgae-based biotechnology has been attracted by their high potential in photosynthesis which leads to recycling of carbon dioxide to valuable resources. Therefore some researches said that mass-cultivation of microalgae would be an advanced agriculture industry in future. Then, should we promote the productivity by adding some nitrogen sources more such as the role of composts supplied in classical agriculture? No, it makes the unbalanced nitrogen-flow of our planet more serious rapidly. This leads to reuse of wastewater containing nitrogen as well as to fulfill huge amount of water demands in microalgal cultivation. Therefore, it is not avoidable to get contamination by exogenous microorganisms, bacteria, protozoa and something else. The effects by exogenous microorganisms would be more complicated when the culture contains organic matters. So far, several researches have studied on the relationships among them but most of them were done under natural water environments. It should be reviewed in a high dense-microalgal cultivation. On this presentation, I’d like to emphasize the necessity of bioremediation in nitrogen cycle and to stimulate to study on the interactions of the microorganisms associating mass-culture of microalgae. Through this, I hope that microalgal biotechnology achieve a new sustainable growth to produce mass-industrial products stably based on mass-cultivation of microalgae as they are delaying to flow excess nitrogen into a natural water environments.

Introduction to the Speaker:

Employment History

    2012-presentLecturer, Pusan National University in Korea

    2009-2012 Research professor, Pusan National University in Korea

    2006-2008 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Hokkaido University in Japan

    Research Interests

    Bioremediation in nitrogen cycle, Molecular approach for microbial ecology, Anammox process, Meta-genomics, Anaerobic digestion, High density cultures of microalgae through crop protection.

Publications

    32 papers including 14 SCI papers