Samuel Courville

I am captivated by the history of our solar system and how humans, as well as life as we know it, intertwine within it.

Broadly, I study three questions:
- Are there environments suitable for life in the outer solar system?
- What’s beneath the surface of planets and moons? What stories of the solar system are coded within subsurface structures and what resources are available for future space exploration?
- What geophysical instruments do we need to further space exploration?

At PSI, I study where to find buried water ice on Mars, how to design planetary seismology instruments to look in the subsurface, and the origin of the lunar swirls. I have expertise in modeling thermal diffusion, radar, seismic waves, gravity, and magnetics. I also use water-rock geochemical equilibrium modeling. I often combine these methods with Bayesian inverse problem techniques.

I strive for a balance of data analysis, numerical modeling, instrument concept development, and field analog studies.