Biography:Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Hadiyah-Nicole Green is an African-American medical physicist known for her part in the development of a process that has the potential to help in the evolution of a novel cancer treatment using laser-activated nanoparticles. She is one of 66 black women to earn a Ph.D. in physics in the United States between 1973 and 2012, and is the second black woman and the fourth black person ever to earn a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Alabama Birmingham.

Early life and education

Green was orphaned at a young age and raised by her aunt and uncle in St. Louis, Missouri. She was the first in her family to attend college.

After her high school graduation, Green attended a summer program in computer science at Xavier University of Louisiana. She then attended Alabama A&M University with a full scholarship, where she studied physics and earned her bachelor's degree in physics and optics in 2003. Her experiences at Xavier and Alabama A&M led her to become a strong advocate for HBCUs because it gave herself a chance to get to know herself and develop as her own person.

Green continued her education at the University of Alabama Birmingham with another full scholarship, where she earned her Master of Science in physics in 2009 and her Ph.D. in physics in 2012. She spent five years at Comprehensive Cancer Center, and one year at the Department of Pathology. [1]

Career and research

Between her undergraduate and graduate work, Green's aunt, Ora Lee, was diagnosed with cancer, but refused to go through treatment. Green spent about three months taking care of her aunt until she died. However, her uncle, General Lee Smith, was also diagnosed with cancer three months after her aunt's death. While tending to her uncle, Green watched as her uncle suffered from the side-effects of chemotherapy and radiation, which, to her, seemed little better than what her aunt went through. These experiences led to Green's interest in developing new cancer treatments. She realized the impact of chemotherapy on the body and wanted to find a better treatment for it.

It was after an internship at NASA that Green realized that lasers were capable of so much more and significant to cancer research. She wanted to use her background in lasers to target cancerous cells without hurting healthy cells. Specifically, lasers are used to "illuminate" the nanoparticles so that they luminesce in order to create an image of cancerous cells and decrease the amount of time it takes to target these cells.

While conducting her doctoral research, Green was a member of a team that developed a laboratory method to insert nanoparticles into cancer cells while avoiding surrounding healthy cells. The tissue incorporating the nanoparticles heats up due to directed laser radiation, which then destroys the cancer cells. She first tested her ideas with cancer cells in a petri dish, then moved on to small animal models using mice. However much more research is needed to be able to extend this nanoparticle treatment to whole animals and then humans.

Green founded the Ora Lee foundation after her aunt Ora Lee who died from cervical/ovarian cancer. The goal of the foundation is to change essentially the pain associated with chemotherapy and radiation as a result of cancer. Additionally, she wanted to make sure that cancer treatments were affordable to the average person and that works. She understood the financial strain by having cancer after going through it with her aunt and uncle.

Following graduate school, Green became an assistant professor at Tuskegee University in the Department of Material Science and Engineering. In 2016 she became an assistant professor at Morehouse School of Medicine in the Physiology department. She received a $1.1 million grant from the Veterans Affairs’ Office of Research & Development to begin clinical trials. Green has reservations about her laser-nanoparticle treatment because it has not gone through immunotherapy or the clinical trial process. She believes that she will need over 20 million dollars to advance the research and get it through the clinical trial process. Green dedicates much of her spare time to speaking to and mentoring young black students.