College of Charleston Physics and Astronomy professor Chris Fragile is one of two professors nationwide to receive a grant of up to $75,000 from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Fragile will use the grant to continue his astrophysics research to better understand black holes and explore the role of radiation in their development.

The grant program was established in 2009 to encourage new research and expand existing research initiatives among ORAU member institutions using high-performance computing systems.

ORNL has two of the world’s three fastest supercomputers, and plans are in place to install another petascale supercomputer, which will be capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second by early 2012. This is equivalent to the combined processing power of one million laptops.

The grant award is $25,000 for the first year with potential funding of up to two more years for a total of $75,000 provided by ORAU. Four grants were awarded in 2009, and all recipients have made sufficient progress on their projects to have their grants renewed for the second year.

“Through this grant program, we can give top researchers access to some of the best tools available in the world,” said Andy Page, ORAU president and CEO. “This program helps us continue building tomorrow’s science and technology leaders, and that’s vital to our nation’s ability to advance and be on the cutting edge of critical scientific research.”