George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia.[9] The university was originally founded in 1949 as a northern branch of the University of Virginia. Named after Founding Father of the United States George Mason in 1959, it became an independent university in 1972. The school has since grown into the largest public university in the Commonwealth of Virginia.[10][11][1] Mason operates four campuses in Virginia (Fairfax, Arlington, Front Royal, and Prince William), as well as a campus in Incheon, South Korea. The flagship campus is in Fairfax. The university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”.[12] Two George Mason professors have won the Nobel Prize in Economics: James M. Buchanan in 1986 and Vernon L. Smith in 2002 Mason offers undergraduate, master’s, law, and doctoral degrees.[96] The student-faculty ratio is 17:1; 58 percent of undergraduate classes have fewer than 30 students and 30 percent of undergraduate classes have fewer than 20 students. The research is focused on health, sustainability and security. In health, researchers focus is on wellness, disease prevention, advanced diagnostics and biomedical analytics. Sustainability research examines climate change, natural disaster forecasting, and risk assessment. Mason’s security experts study domestic and international security as well as cyber security.