Jiratchaya Thanayangyuen Receives 2026 Denton Award

Jiratchaya “Janice” Thanayangyuen of the Tay Lab was selected as the winner of the 2026 Denton Award for her master’s research thesis in Biology titled “Sex Differences in Microglial Responses Tt Diffuse and Dense-core Amyloid-β Plaques in 5xfad Mice.” This award is given for excellence in scholarship and research accomplishment during a master’s thesis under the mentorship of a faculty member of the Department of Biology.

Janice is from Thailand and received the Royal Thai Scholarship when she was in high school to pursue higher education in the United States. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Pre-Veterinary Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she first began working with laboratory animals and gained experience particularly with mice. Janice then continued her studies in the Master’s program in Biology at Boston University, where she joined Tuan Leng Tay’s lab. Her research focuses on how microglia respond differently in male and female 5XFAD mice to amyloid-beta plaques during the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She also applies computational image-analysis tools such as CellProfiler to automatically measure and quantify biological data, combining neuroscience research with quantitative analytical approaches. This work aims to advance the understanding of why women are at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and to support the development of more effective therapeutic strategies for male and female patients in the future.

Congratulations, Janice!