Dr. Nils C. Prieur

Dr. Nils C. Prieur

Planetary scientist

Blog posts

2024

2023

2022

Fieldwork preparation.

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Bonjour, everyone! The countdown is on—just a few weeks to go until the summer 2022 drone campaign kicks off! After lots of scouting, airspace checks, and careful consideration, we’ve locked in three fieldwork locations. Two of them, the Obsidian Dome and South Deadman Dome, are near Mammoth Lakes in the Sierra Nevada. These volcanic domes were shaped by explosive phreatic eruptions and rhyolitic lava flows, leaving behind fields of boulders that are perfect for the BOULDERING project.

First Conference of the Project: Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).

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Hey everyone! Big milestone: I attended the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC)—the first conference of the BOULDERING project. The LPSC abstract deadline sneaks up early in January, and though my results were still in their infancy, I decided to go for it. My abstract, titled “A Large Training Dataset of Boulder Sizes and Shapes as a First Step Towards the Automated Detection of Rock Fragments on Planetary Surfaces,” focused on the data I’ve labeled so far, the challenges encountered, my plans, and how our method stacks up against existing approaches. It felt like the perfect way to introduce myself and the project to the planetary science community. A “Hello, I’m Nils, and this is BOULDERING” moment!

First Drone test: finding a location in the bay area is…. not easy!

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Hey folks! Before I jump into fieldwork, I need to get comfortable with my new drone. That means finding a spot for a test flight—easier said than done in the Bay Area! Drones are only allowed in uncontrolled airspace (Class G), and with major airports like SF and Oakland nearby, plus a bunch of smaller ones, Class G airspace is as rare as a unicorn.

Living far away from wifey and family. Not easy!

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Hey everyone! Today’s entry is a bit more personal. Living far from home isn’t a walk in the park. My wife, Siri, is also a researcher, currently doing her postdoc at Ås University near Oslo. As much as we’d love to live together, her work keeps her in Norway, though she visits me every 3–4 months. She’s even considering applying for funding to establish a collaboration with a group here at Stanford—fingers crossed for early 2023!

2021

Preparation of Lunar Data and First Training of a Boulder Detection Algorithm

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Hey folks! While I’m still waiting for the fieldwork season to kick off next year, I’ve been keeping busy with some lunar data. My current focus is mapping boulders around young impact craters on the Moon—by “young,” I mean geologically speaking, anywhere from a few million to a couple of hundred million years old. Since the Moon lacks an atmosphere and active geology, erosion is quite slow, preserving impact craters for much longer periods than on Earth.

Drone License in the Pocket, Fieldwork in Death Valley, Drone Is Bought!

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Hey folks! Big news: I’m officially a licensed drone operator in the U.S. 🎉 On December 9th, 2021, I took the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft General (UAG) exam, and wow, it was no joke. It felt like cramming for an airline pilot’s test! The 100+ pages of dense regulations, airspace classifications, and emergency procedures were quite the mountain to climb. And, after a grueling 150 minutes, I passed—just barely, with the minimum 70%! Talk about a nail-biter.

Getting Started with the Project

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Hey everyone! After a month of running around like a headless chicken—attending mandatory classes, filling out forms, and finally setting up my office—I can officially say that I’m ready to dive into the science. It feels great to shift gears from logistics to research!

About my Marie Skłodowska-Curie project – How boulder mapping can help reveal how planetary surfaces evolved

less than 1 minute read

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Craters are very common surface features on many solid planets and moons. During an impact, rock fragments ejected from the crater cavity could be deposited elsewhere on the surface, where they could potentially form secondary craters. Boulders are the only remnants of these ejected materials. Their size and shape, as well as the terrain on which they are found, provide important insight into the ejection mechanisms. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the BOULDERING project plans to use high-resolution imaging and deep learning to further investigate the size and shape distributions of boulder populations. Project results could boost our understanding of the planetary surface evolution.

New apartment and meeting colleagues for the first time

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After a memorable first night sleeping on the ground (IKEA could not deliver our madrass the same day! and discovering that the airbed we bought at Target had a huge hole in it! Thanks Target), I got to meet my new kind colleagues at a barbecue event organized by Stanford’s department of Geosciences. In the next two years, I will be part of the Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Lab group (EPSP), led by associate professor Mathieu Lapotre, and which is composed of two postdocts (Lior Rubanenko and Andrew Gunn), two PhDs (Michael Hasson and Colin Marvin) and myself. The EPSP lab focus on the use of comparative planetology (i.e., understanding a specific process we see on Earth to better understand this same process on another planetary surfaces) with topics such as dune and river processes. A much better description of the group can be found here: https://epsp.stanford.edu/. The barbecue event was a very good icebreaker.

Getting settled at Stanford

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Bonjour guys! The ten first days in the US have been super hectic and a bit crazy. After the crazy jet lag of the first days, we set ourselves in the quest of finding an apartment relatively close to Stanford University. Easier said than done. The Bay Area is infamously known for its pricey accommodations, and I have to mention that I would never have been able to live in the Bay Area without the help of the Norwegian Research Council, which is generously helping me in addition to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global grant. Of course, I could have lived in a cheap community house (well, it is actually not that cheap! about 1500 USD per month), sharing a house with 10 other poor academic people. However, I feel that I am past this period of my life, and it is more practical to have my own place, so that my wife and family members can easily come for visit! Anyway, we visited about ten apartments before finding the right place in Palo Alto Downtown. This place is only a few minutes by bike from Stanford University, pretty cosy and one of the most affordable places we have been visiting. After opening a bank account and transferring quickly the deposit and first rent from my Norwegian account, we got the keys of our new apartment just one week after we moved to the US! I think we deserve a cheering clap on our shoulders. Good job! In the looong list of things that was fixed during the first days, we bought two bikes as we had to unfortunately to return our car rental. We now have to survive with bikes in the country of CARS! gl hf! (good luck, have fun!). Ok, I got to go to fix more stuff. Next on the list (Internet, US phone, Social Security Number, Health insurance and much more!). Help!

Arrival in the US

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Hi people, this is the first entry on the blog. Whoop whoop! This is kicking off the start of the BOULDERING Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global fellowship funded by the European Union (thanks again!). But, first, if you want to learn more about a Marie Curie postdoc, please have a look here. This fellowship will last for three years, two years at Stanford University, and the last twelve months at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo. I am not sure how those three next years will go, but I am motivated and will do my best to share the evolution of the project with you along the way on this blog. So let’s start this fellowship (as the European Research Council likes to call this postdoctoral research position). I secretly like to think about this fellowship as the fellowship in The Lord of the Rings. I hope I will manage to throw the One Ring in Mount Doom at tne end of those three next years!