Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Hadiyah-Nicole Green (1981) is an American medical physicist, known for the development of a method using laser-activated nanoparticles as a potential cancer treatment. 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 at 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 received a full academic scholarship to Alabama A&M University, where she earned her bachelor's degree in physics with a specialization in optics and a minor in mathematics in 2003. She has spoken about how her experiences at Xavier and Alabama A&M led her to become a strong advocate for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by giving her a chance to get to know herself and develop as her own person.

Green continued her education at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she earned her M.Sc. in physics in 2009 and her Ph.D. in physics in 2012. Her thesis, "A Minimally-Invasive Multifunctional Nano-Enabled Approach for Selective Targeting, Imaging, and NIR Photothermal Therapy of Tumors", was supervised by Sergey B. Mirov.

Career and research
Shortly after she graduated from Alabama A&M, Green learned that Ora Lee Smith, the aunt who'd raised her, had been diagnosed with female reproductive cancer. Fearing the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation, her aunt chose to forgo treatment. Green cared for her aunt in the last three months of her life. Following her aunt's death in 2005, her uncle General Lee Smith, was also diagnosed with cancer. 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.

It was after an internship at NASA that Green realized the potential use of laser in cancer research. She wanted to use her background in lasers to target cancerous cells without hurting healthy cells. Specifically, she developed a method where lasers are used to "illuminate" the nanoparticles 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 the 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. Her current research efforts seek to extend this nanoparticle treatment to humans.

Following graduate school, Green became an assistant professor at Tuskegee University in the Department of Material Science and Engineering. In 2016, she was recruited to Morehouse School of Medicine in the department of surgery and received a $1.1 million grant from the Veterans Affairs Historically Black Colleges and Universities Research Scientist Training Program to advance her laser treatment.

In 2016, Green founded the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation in memory of her aunt. The goal of the foundation is to advance cancer treatment so that it is effective with minimal side effects. The non-profit foundation also aims to make cancer treatment accessible and affordable for all.

Green dedicates much of her spare time to speaking to and mentoring young black students.