[1] She was awarded a DoD NDSEG Fellowship for her doctoral studies, and completed graduate certificates in Hydrologic Sciences and in College Teaching while at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Fairfax says that her interest in science developed at an early age—as a young child she told her that mother that wanted to walk on the rings of Saturn, but to not worry because she'd bring her car seat to be safe.
She primarily uses remote sensing, modeling, and field work to quantify changes in ecosystem health before, during, and after disturbances in areas with and without beaver activity.
[26] She has testified before the Oregon State Legislature on the science of beaver-driven climate resilience and her studies are referenced in global, regional, and state-level land management planning documents.
[27][28][29] Fairfax worked with a team of engineers from Google to build a machine-learning image recognition model called EEAGER (Earth Engine Automated Geospatial Element(s) Recognition) that can identify beaver dams in satellite and aerial imagery, in hopes of expediting the field of beaver research and the implementation of beaver-based restoration projects.