Maddie Fail, who recently graduated from The University of Texas at Austin as a government and environmental science double major, is one of 26 U.S. students who have been named Gates Cambridge Scholars this year. This highly prestigious scholarship, established through a donation from the Gates Foundation, fully funds students' graduate education at the University of Cambridge.

Fail will pursue a doctoral degree in Earth sciences. She plans to use machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, to connect on-the-ground monitoring with remote sensing to study the carbon that is held and released by two peat bogs in the U.K.

This is quite a feat for someone who didn't even know she was interested in the geosciences until two years ago. Fail began her undergraduate career as a government major. She didn't take her first geosciences course until the spring of her sophomore year. She is quick to note that her name isn't in the author list of any publications, and she claims not to have the same caliber of résumé as many of her peers. She worked through college - as much as 30 hours a week as an in-home caregiver and lab assistant.

Fail said that her success shows the value of trying anyway.

"I'm hoping that other people, maybe similar to me, who don't have a crazy résumé and maybe had to work through college, know that it's a possibility," Fail said. "I really struggled with that this whole time - imposter syndrome. I still really don't believe that I'm going."

Fail currently works as a postbaccalaureate researcher at the Jackson School of Geosciences, where she is preparing samples in professor Dan Breecker's stable isotope lab. Breecker, who was also her undergraduate adviser, said that Fail is incredibly mature and self-confident, although she may not recognize those qualities in herself. He emphasized that her success is all her own.

"I didn't encourage her to apply to graduate school or to the Gates Cambridge scholarship; she figured out all of that on her own accord," Breecker said. "I just wrote some recommendation letters, which in her case were a cinch."

Fail came to the geosciences through an introduction to geology class for nonmajors taught by assistant professor Geeta Persad. The course introduced her to the range of topics covered by geosciences and set her on a new path.

"I didn't know the breadth of information that's included in the geology umbrella. And I was like, 'Wow, I can do chemistry. I can do atmospheric science - all these different things under this one discipline,'" Fail said.

During the fall of her junior year, she took on her second major, environmental science with a geosciences focus, and began to dig into soil science. Soil science requires the mastery of a wide range of subjects - geology, chemistry, biology, and even sociology and philosophy, Fail said. For example, she believes that because soils are often studied in rural areas, researchers should build relationships with neighboring communities and bring them into the scientific process whenever possible. It requires an interdisciplinary, community-minded approach to research, she said.

As Fail dove headfirst into the geosciences, she likewise fell in love with research and decided that she wanted to continue this work in graduate school. She started to email faculty members all over the country about pursuing a graduate degree with them. Eventually, she also looked abroad and made a connection with professor Sasha Turchyn at the University of Cambridge.

Turchyn encouraged Fail to apply to graduate school at Cambridge and look into the Gates Cambridge scholarship. Fail decided to go for it and received help navigating the application process from the UT Office of Distinguished and Postgraduate Scholarships.

Fail's research on peatlands at Cambridge will contribute to science's understanding of the carbon cycle. There's a big question about whether bogs produce or absorb more carbon - a topic Fail is excited to explore.

"These are systems that cover small portions of the global surface area but hold enormous stores of carbon," she said. "So, it's vitally important for us to understand how the carbon behaves in these ecosystems so that we can inform management and preservation efforts."