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#BlackGirlMagic: Meet the Woman Who's Our Best Hope for Curing Cancer

Physicist Hadiyah Nicole-Green just might save your life.

Hayidah-Nicole Green is on a mission to help humanity.
The physicist was recently granted a $1.1 million cancer research grant through the Veterans Affairs Historical Black Colleges and Universities Research Scientist Training Program to help continue her groundbreaking work to fight cancer.

Her work, which involves lasers and nanoparticles to target cancer cells, has had proven success in the lab. While this is an incredible accomplishment of its own, when you consider the fact that Green is the first member of her family to ever go to college, it becomes truly awe-inspiring.

One of less than 100 Black female physicists in the United States, she was inspired to battle when she watched the aunt and uncle who raised her succumb to cancer after struggling through radiation and chemotherapy. This inspired her to turn her education and experience to fighting cancer.
When asked about her journey by MademeNoire, she said, "It was awful and I saw why my aunt opted out of it. My uncle did go on to live for 10 years more, but both of those experiences made me think there had to be a better way to deal with cancer."

Green is committed to discovering a more humane way of attacking cancer cells by using the modern technology she has expertise in to pinpoint cancerous cells and attack them directly without affecting the rest of the body. 

So far, Green is testing two different treatments. One focuses on tumor shrinkage and tumor regression, the other is monotherapy, which is a form of immunotherapy and an interface with personalized medicine.

Green still needs more money, though. "We're talking upwards of $20 million," she said. "I still need to gather support by a fundraising effort."

She has a website, physics2cancer, that accepts donations to help continue her research to fight and beat cancer. 

As for the future, Green is hoping that she can have as big an impact on the world as the most famous physicist in history. She said, "When I thought of a physicist, I thought of Albert Einstein. I hope in the future people will also think of me, a Black female physicist."

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