*Dissertation Defense Announcement:
To:  The George Mason University Community*

*Candidate: Andrew M. Heekin
Program: PhD Bioinformatics & Computational Biology 
*
*Date:   Tuesday June 21, 2011
Time:   10:00 a.m. 
Place:  George Mason University
** 	     Occoquan Bldg. Room 203
	     Prince William campus <http://www.gmu.edu/resources/visitors/findex.html>
  
Dissertation Chair: Dr. Patrick Gillevet
Committee members: Dr. Jason Kinser, Dr. Huzefa Rangwala
*
*Title: "Characterization of the Human Gastrointestinal Microbiome
Via Metabolic Pathway Analysis"**
*
The dissertation is on reserve in the Johnson Center Library, Fairfax campus.
The doctoral project will not be read at the meeting, but should be read in advance. 
/**/All members of the George Mason University community are invited to attend.


*ABSTRACT: *
This dissertation presents a novel computational pipeline combining several
computational approaches to quantify changes, when compared to healthy controls,
that occur in the microbiome of subjects with various diseases: obesity, Cohn's Disease (CD),
and Ulcerative Colitis (UC). By analyzing samples from diseased individuals and healthy
individuals, classifiers are constructed that discriminate between a healthy gut microbiome
and a dysbiotic gut microbiome.
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