Drawing on our roots as the university that overcame adversity to become the nation’s youngest-ever R1 institution—and one whose sponsored research funding has grown 64 percent since 2020—George Mason University is launching a university-wide strategy to sharpen our focus on humanity’s most pressing issues while maximizing our competitiveness for external research funding: the Grand Challenge Initiative. For this episode of Access to Excellence, Andre Marshall, vice president for research, innovation, and economic impact at George Mason, joins President Gregory Washington to discuss this new initiative and how it will shape the future of our university.