College of Charleston Professor of Physics Sorinel Oprisan has been awarded the Faculty Early Career Development award from the National Science Foundation. The award comes with a $500,000 research grant.

This award is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

With the grant money, Oprisan will conduct research on computational neuroscience. The focus of this research is to understand how large neural networks process and respond to external stimuli. He hopes this research will significantly add to the understanding of the human nervous system and its related disorders.

Oprisan has been a member of the College of Charleston’s Department of Physics and Astronomy since 2005.