Hadiyah-Nicole Green

Hadiyah-Nicole Green (born in St Louis, Missouri) is a medical physicist credited with developing a method for using laser-activated nanoparticles to treat cancers.

After the deaths of her parents, Green was raised by an aunt and uncle in St Louis. After graduating high school she attented a summer program in computer science at Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She earned a full academic scholarship to Alabama A&M University. In 2003 she completed a bachelor of science in physics, specializing in optics with a minor in mathematics. Shortly after graduating she learned that her aunt, Ora Lee Smith, had been diagnosed with a female reproductive cancer. Smith declined treatment with chemotherapy and radiation, and died in 2005. Soon later her uncle, General Lee Smith, was also diagnosed with cancer. He did receive chemotherapy and radiation treatment and suffered severe side effects.

From those experiences, Green developed a specific interest in cancer research. She went on to earn a master's and Ph.D. in physics at UAB in 2009 and 2012. Her dissertation, "A Minimally-Invasive Multifunctional Nano-Enabled Approach for Selective Targeting, Imaging, and NIR Photothermal Therapy of Tumors," was supervised by Sergey Mirov.