physics

Kandice Tanner

Kandice Tanner is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kandice Tanner rather than just read about it. In short: Kandice Tanner is a Trinidad and Tobago biophysicist researching the metastatic traits that allow tumor cells to colonize secondary organs. She is a Senior Investigator (full tenure) at the National Cancer Institute, where she is head of the Tissue morphodynamics section.

Key takeaways

Kandice Tanner belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kandice Tanner to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kandice Tanner from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kandice Tanner is a Trinidad and Tobago biophysicist researching the metastatic traits that allow tumor cells to colonize secondary organs. She is a Senior Investigator (full tenure) at the National Cancer Institute, where she is head of the Tissue morphodynamics section.

Early life and education Kandice Tanner was born in Trinidad and Tobago. Her father was a manufacturing engineer and her mother stayed at home with Tanner and her siblings for 7 years before returning to the workplace. Tanner has said that her mother always knew she would become a physicist from her early affinity for math and science. Kandice Tanner attended Bishop Anstey High School, an all girls school in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, before becoming one of the only 12 female students at an all-boys school of 1,200 students. She intended on attending the University of the West Indies where she had already been accepted before receiving a full scholarship at the South Carolina State University, a historically Black college in Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 2002, Tanner completed a dual bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and physics, summa cum laude. In 2006, she completed a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign under advisor Enrico Gratton. Her doctoral research entailed mapping functional specialization in mammalian brains. Tanner's dissertation was titled "Cat"-ology: spectrally resolved neurophotonics in the mammalian brain and phantom studies. She conducted post-doctoral training at the University of California, Irvine specializing in dynamic imaging of thick tissues. She then became a Department of Defense Breast Cancer Post-doctoral fellow jointly at University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory under Mina Bissell.

Career

Tanner joined the National Cancer Institute as a Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator in July 2012, where she integrates concepts from molecular biophysics and cell biology to learn how cells and tissues sense and respond to their physical microenvironment, and to thereby design therapeutics and cellular biotechnology. She received full tenure in 2020. She is currently a senior principal investigator in the laboratory of cell biology serving as head of the tissue morphodynamics section.

Research

Tanner's expertise includes multimodal imaging platforms, 3D cell culture, biophysics, mechanobiology, and breast cancer. Her laboratory focuses on understanding the metastatic traits that allow tumor cells to colonize secondary organs. Her team includes physicists, engineers, and cancer biologists. They have determined that cells can switch between different types of motility namely rotation, random and amoeboid when placed in 3D biomimetic platforms. Tanner's lab has linked the type of motility to the establishment of distinct multicellular architectures and tissue polarity. Additionally, they use optical microscopy to uncover in vivo mechanisms of metastasis using zebrafish as an animal model. The laboratory studies are focused on understanding how physical cues from the tissue microenvironment drive organ specific metastasis.

Awards and honors Tanner was awarded the 2013 National Cancer Institute Director's Intramural Innovation Award, the 2015 NCI Leading Diversity award, Federal Technology Transfer Award in 2016 and 2018, the 2016 Young Fluorescence Investigator award from the Biophysical Society, and named as a Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering in 2016 by the Biomedical Engineering Society. In 2020, Tanner was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Selected works Ulrich, Theresa A.; Jain, Amit; Tanner, Kandice; MacKay, Joanna L.; Kumar, Sanjay (2010). "Probing cellular mechanobiology in three-dimensional culture with collagen–agarose matrices". Biomaterials. 31 (7): 1875–1884. doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2009.10.047. PMID 19926126. Tanner, K.; Mori, H.; Mroue, R.; Bruni-Cardoso, A.; Bissell, M. J. (2012). "Coherent angular motion in the establishment of multicellular architecture of glandular tissues". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (6): 1973–1978. Bibcode:2012PNAS..109.1973T. doi:10.1073/pnas.1119578109. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3277511. PMID 22308439. Tanner, Kandice; Gottesman, Michael M. (2015). "Beyond 3D culture models of cancer". Science Translational Medicine. 7 (283): 283ps9. doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.3009367. ISSN 1946-6234. PMC 5063633. PMID 25877888.

References

External links Oral history interview transcript for Kandice Tanner on 18 March 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives

Illustrations

Kandice Tanner: Tanner in her laboratory — Tanner in her laboratory

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kandice Tanner

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kandice Tanner claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kandice Tanner before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kandice Tanner ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kandice Tanner

In research: Kandice Tanner appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kandice Tanner in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kandice Tanner is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century biologists, 21st-century physicists, 21st-century women physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kandice Tanner outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Kandice Tanner” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Kandice Tanner in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kandice Tanner means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kandice Tanner out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kandice Tanner in simple terms?

Why does Kandice Tanner matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kandice Tanner?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kandice Tanner.