PhD Dissertation Defense - Environmental Science and Policy

PhD Dissertation
Department of Environmental Science and Policy
College of Science
George Mason University

Candidate: Furhad Nasserjah
Defense Date and Time: April 23, 2026 at 3:00pm
Defense Location: Virtual on Zoom
Title: From Social Inequality to Microbial Ecology: Investigating How Socioeconomic Status and Medical Treatment Shape the Human Gut Microbiome

Dissertation Director: Naoru Koizumi, PhD
Committee: Ted Hsuan Yun Chen PhD, Ali Andalibi PhD, Obi Ekwenna, MD

ABSTRACT

Health outcomes suffer from socioeconomic inequality because it determines people's ability to receive medical care and maintain disease prevention. The human gut microbiome serves as a distinct tool to study how social inequalities together with healthcare access affect physical health at a biological level. The research combines social science approaches with clinical knowledge and ecological methods to study how economic standing and health insurance affect gut microbial diversity and community organization. The research investigates social disadvantage effects on microbial systems through both population-wide patterns and kidney transplant biological outcomes using meta-analysis and patient-level microbiome data and network-based ecological methods.