GMU president Ángel Cabrera is speaking at our Prince William County Harnessing Innovation event next Tuesday (sign up here). To get ready, we asked him a few questions.

What’s kept you busy the last two years? Crafting a new strategic plan, opening a campus in Korea, and signing a partnership with a third-party organization to recruit more international students. The 10-year plan doubles GMU’s sponsored research dollars so we can grow research in cybersecurity, healthcare, biomedical, IT, and other fields. 
What’s GMU’s role in local innovation? There’s a direct relationship between competitiveness of a country or region and the number of world-class universities in that region. There would be no Silicon Valley without Stanford and Cal-Berkeley. Northern Virginia has a sophisticated knowledge-based economy and we’re building a world-class research university at its core.
What’s the future of GMU's Prince William campus? It’s become a hub of science and tech for Mason in areas of molecular medicine and infectious diseases and with our Simulation & Game Institute and other programs. We want to see more labs and research, more connections to business, and the incubation of new businesses.

Inspiration for an education career: Granddad was a teacher in a poor farming town in Spain called El Torno. It was the least developed part of Spain, so it was a big deal to be a teacher. I spent the summers with him and planned early on to become a teacher.
Grew up: Madrid.
Current home: In the president’s house off Popes Head Road, a few miles from the Fairfax campus.
Why the US: A Fulbright scholarship—got a master's and PhD at Georgia Tech. Also met my wife there.
First job: Dad owned a small coffee shop, so worked for him and did a lot of tutoring.
Daily habit: Long walks.
Favorite local restaurant: Minibar.
Favorite book: Don Quixote.
Family: Married, son (17) and daughter (15).
Free time: Hiking, reading, and skiing.
You’re active on Twitter (nearly 12,000 followers). Do you write your own tweets? Oh yes! If you delegate your tweets to someone else, people will know. I like having a direct pathway to Mason students, faculty, staff, parents, prospective students, and alumni. 
Startling fact: In college, I hiked across the Sahara Desert.