American medical physicist Dr Hadiyah-Nicole Green is one of only 66 black American women to earn a doctorate (from a US university) in any field from 1973 to 2012 – compared to over 22,000 white men. Even beyond that distinction, she has become a trailblazer in cancer treatment with her groundbreaking research.
The technology involves injecting the patient with nano-particles that create a fluorescent effect in cancer cells, which in turn are targeted with a laser that activates the nano-particles and destroys the cells. Because the two halves of the treatment are independently not effective, the method allows for enormous precision, ensuring only the cancerous cells are targeted.
Although not the originator of the method, Dr Green’s seven years of work across her Masters’ and PhD studies addressed shortfalls in the technology that allowed it to be successfully trialed on mice. In 2016 she was awarded a grant of $1.1 million USD to further develop the technology, with the hope of eventually moving to human clinical trials.
Dr Green was not just inspired by a theoretically challenging problem, but by the real-world effects she hoped her work could have. Having lost the aunt and uncle who raised her to cancer she set out to save other patients who could not be helped by existing medicine, demonstrating the impact on ordinary lives that cutting edge lab work can aim for.
Driven by this, she founded the Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, which is dedicated to funding human trials and ensuring this life-saving treatment remains accessible and affordable to all.
In 2024 Dr Green was given the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes extraordinary community service. Among her notable contributions is the research paper: “A Minimally Invasive Multifunctional Nanoscale System for Selective Targeting, Imaging, and NIR Photothermal Therapy of Malignant Tumors” (2011).