{"id":111188,"date":"2026-10-06T15:50:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T15:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=111188"},"modified":"2026-10-06T15:50:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T15:50:33","slug":"two-uri-physics-professors-receive-nsf-awards-to-further-study-science-behind-black-holes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2026\/10\/two-uri-physics-professors-receive-nsf-awards-to-further-study-science-behind-black-holes\/","title":{"rendered":"Two URI physics professors receive NSF awards to further study science behind black holes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 6, 2026 \u2013 Black holes and their complexity continue to fascinate astrophysics researchers around the world, including those at the University of Rhode Island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers are drawn to how these massive, dense concentrations of energy affect their surroundings and want to learn more about how the universe as a whole was shaped by them billions of years ago. Now, two professors in URI\u2019s Department of Physics<\/a> are diving deep into understanding more about how outer space was molded by black holes, thanks to individual grants they received from the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Derek
URI physics professor Derek Davis received a $260,886 National Science Foundation grant to help promote collaboration between URI and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington state to help improve researchers\u2019 ability to detect black holes. (URI photos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Derek Davis<\/a>, a physics professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, received a $260,886 NSF grant to be used over two years. The award, through NSF\u2019s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research Fellows (EPSCoR) project, will promote collaboration between URI and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Washington state to help improve researchers\u2019 ability to detect black holes. Similarly, physics professor Deborah Ferguson<\/a> was awarded $150,000 over three years to understand how black holes work and to help establish a waveform database to accurately identify black holes existing in outer space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI’m really excited to work with Deborah and the synergy we have on how we’re approaching the problem,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThere are a lot of similarities about the work we\u2019re doing surrounding black holes and we have the exact same goals. Deborah’s group is focusing on what we are actually seeing and making predictions about what we can do, and my group is focusing more on actually making those discoveries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferguson and Davis have been studying black hole phenomena extensively at URI. Last year, they were part of an astrophysics team at the University whose work helped LIGO identify a few hundred gravitational wave signals\u2014a project that was spotlighted by CNN<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Deborah
URI physics professor Deborah Ferguson received a $150,000 NSF grant to understand how black holes work and to help establish a waveform database to accurately identify black holes existing in outer space.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Davis\u2019 award will support travel for them and a URI graduate student to visit LIGO and collaborate with researchers there to develop new methods for LIGO\u2019s gravitational wave detections, allowing the machinery to find these black hole waves more clearly without outside noise interfering. At LIGO, Davis and the student will help run on-site tests, including playing music on speakers, to see how the laboratory detectors respond while operating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work will also include studying stellar remnants\u2014dense, compact core objects left behind after a star exhausts its nuclear fuel and reaches the end of its life cycle\u2014to paint a better picture of how the universe evolved over time via black holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe ultimate goal is for us to see more signals and see them more clearly,\u201d Davis said. \u201cBy removing these different noise sources, it’s kind of like cleaning off the fogginess of your glasses to have a lot sharper vision of these actual signals themselves to improve the types of astrophysics that we’re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferguson will be using \u201cnumerical relativity,\u201d which is using computers to solve Albert Einstein\u2019s equations, to simulate how black holes merge and what the gravitational waves will look like. That includes the challenge of better understanding the parameter spaces that describe the black holes, which are not always symmetrical, Ferguson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a database of clear gravitational waves would be something akin to a \u201cShazam\u201d for black holes, Ferguson said, allowing researchers and scientists to better understand which black holes merged, their sizes and the masses they created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is giving us a whole new way of looking at black holes and neutron stars in a way that we weren’t able to before,\u201d said Ferguson, who will also have a URI graduate student conduct research for her grant-funded project. \u201cFrom there, we can start to understand questions about how abundant they are, and what their masses and spins are like. That will tell us things about how galaxies evolve, how the universe got to where it is today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 6, 2026 \u2013 Black holes and their complexity continue to fascinate astrophysics researchers around the world, including those at the University of Rhode Island.  Researchers are drawn to how these massive, dense concentrations of energy affect their surroundings and want to learn more about how the universe as a whole was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":111190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,1905],"class_list":["post-111188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111188"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111193,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111188\/revisions\/111193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}