Name: Profile: Naomi Halas
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<div class="rich-text">(This video is no longer available for streaming.) Nanotechnologist Naomi Halas of Rice University has invented tiny structures called "gold nanoshells," which may someday help treat tumors. Halas tunes the nanoparticles to absorb a specific wavelength of light that passes harmlessly through the human body. When that light hits the injested nanoshells, they grow hot enough to burn away targeted nearby tissue such as a tumor.
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Naomi Halas is a pioneering nanotechnologist bent on seeing practical applications for her work—and soon.

<div class="rich-text">Naomi Halas is a pioneering nanotechnologist bent on seeing practical applications for her work—and soon.</div>

Halas is a pioneering nanotechnologist bent on seeing practical applications for her work.

Profile: Naomi Halas

Body & Brain

<div class="rich-text"><h3>
 PROFILE: NAOMI HALAS
</h3>

 PBS Airdate: April 19, 2005



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 Okay, enough of big, time to get small again. And I mean really, really
small. Here's something exquisitely small. This is the tip of a pin. We're
going to move in on the tip and get smaller still.


 You see those little blobs there? They are bacteria on the pin, and then on
the bacteria, you see that little speck? It's a few hundred atoms
across.


 That teeny thing made news recently, because it is an invention. It was
built by a scientist you're about to meet. And the fact that she is a she was
also news, because there aren't a lot of shes doing this kind of thing. And
some prominent folks have wondered why. So here is her story.


 Naomi Halas knows how guys think. Her ranch in Texas is way, way outside
Houston in brush country, so it's a little hard to find, but, as it
happens...



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 One of our neighbors used to be a, was a former
 <cite>
 Penthouse
 </cite>
 Pet, so she was a bit of a local celebrity.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So whenever Naomi needed lumber, or whatever,
delivered, all she had to say to the delivery guy, any delivery guy apparently,
was...



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 "Do you know where the stripper lives?" And they would all
know. And so rather than going into long detailed directions, all I'd have to
do is say well, we're about 200 yards past the stripper, on the left.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 The ranch is for weekends. During the week,
Naomi Halas is a professor at Rice University teaching Nanotechnology and
Applied Physics, fields that are 90 percent dominated by men. But not here. Not
in her group. If you look around, it's about even, which is different for
guys...



 SWEDISH GRAD STUDENT:
 
 I think this is great. What else could I say?



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 ...and very different for women.



 STUDENT:
 
 Being a woman has actually never been an issue for me in this
group. You just forget about it, which is nice, a nice feeling, because a lot
of people aren't that lucky.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So how'd this happen? How'd Naomi create such
an unusual balance? Even her husband—this is Peter—he joins the
group, not as the leader, he's just one of the gang. Well, there's a story
here.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 You know, the best science stories are told backwards,
okay? So...



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So let's go back a bit. When Naomi was
growing up—yeah that's her, and so is this—she never thought about
becoming a scientist, even in high school.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 I remember very clearly in high school, although I was
always at the top of my class in math and science, I was told, "Don't take
physics." And the reason I was told not to take physics was because if I ever
took physics, I would never get a date.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So she didn't take physics, she became a
musician. And one day, she was wondering where sounds came from, and a friend
said, "Well, acoustics requires calculus."



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 "But, of course, you've taken calculus, haven't you?" And
it just kind of hit me like a load of bricks. In fact, I hadn't taken calculus.
I had actually bought into this myth that maybe I probably wasn't going to be
very good at math.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 But she was good. So at 20, she decided, "You
know what? I'm going to drop music and switch to something science-y."



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 I thought, "Well, maybe I want to retool my career."



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 But what about her, you know, her uh,
feminine problem?



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 No, I didn't, I didn't have a feminine problem.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 In other words, you weren't embarrassed to do
un-girlish stuff?



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 No, I was really a...I was really butch, actually.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So she switched from music to chemistry, and
then, interestingly, chose a female-friendly graduate program at Bryn
Mawr.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 Bryn Mawr was certainly a place where women were 100
percent accepted.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 And that's where she got her M.A. and Ph.D.
in physics, and she married.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 Have you thought about doing that?



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 And when she joined the faculty at Rice
University, Naomi found herself increasingly attracted by the world of the
very, very small, the nano world.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 This is a vial of gold nano particles, solid gold
nanospheres.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 They're so small you can't see them. They're
little clumps of gold atoms. But if you invent a clump that's hollow inside it
will absorb a different color of light. And by changing the thickness of the
gold shell, you can make it absorb whatever color you want. So look. Here, what
was once ruby red is now clear.


 Naomi's work was new and very interesting to graduate students, well to
men. Women...?



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 For the first six years, I had no women whatsoever. And
then I had one. And once, once I had her, I became okay, and then lots of women
began to join my group.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 Which was, at first, kind of unusual.



 GRADUATE STUDENT:
 
 We're changing that. It won't be unusual for long.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 Women told women, "This is a good group."
Naomi says, "You know, I never planned this."



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 It just seems to sort of happen. Maybe having all these
women attracts the men.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So in the end, she gets a balance. But the
growing gang of women at Rice were at first, invisible.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 For most of my scientific career I didn't publish with my
first name in the paper. I was always N. Halas. And so, many people knew about
my work and had no idea I was a woman, because they read my work in the
literature.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 But when Naomi and her colleagues created
nanoshells by manipulating atoms, then the world noticed: The New York Times,
Popular Science, Profiles. Nanoshells made Naomi and her lab famous. And yet,
even as a tenured professor, plus by now she'd bought the ranch. As successful
as she was, one day when she was presenting her findings at a meeting at
Rice...



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 A man walked up to me, and in a very loud voice, said,
"Excuse me, are you the lady in charge of the coffee?" And when I heard that, I
just turned around and I walked back to my office, and I just sat there and,
you know, I almost burst into tears. This is ridiculous. I don't want to
have...Is it for the rest of my life, I'm going to be mistaken for somebody
who's in charge of the coffee? And then I said, "No, I think I will go back
there because I don't want that person to win. I want to, I want to be, I want
to participate in the forum and I don't care if he thinks I'm in charge of the
coffee." So I went back.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 And the contacts she made at that meeting led
to a business, which she started with biology professor Jennifer West. And they
are now injecting nanoshells into animals with cancer. So here, to demonstrate,
they're using a chicken breast. The nanoshells will gather inside the
tumor.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 And once they're in place, then light is shined through the
skin and down into the tumor site.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 ...warming up the nanoshells so they burn the
tumor. That's the steam there.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 And that's sufficient to kill the cells in the tumor.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 So without radiation, with light, you can
attack cancer sites.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 That's incredibly non-invasive, if you consider other types
of cancer therapies.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 These therapies are still being tested by the
women and the men who have gathered around Naomi. But the women, she says, even
now, have to struggle to stay in the game.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 I always thought it was a generational thing. I always
thought, well when I was a young scientist, "Oh, those are the older people.
They're like that. But when people, when I'm older, then people won't be like
that anymore." But they are.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 Too often, female grad students drop out,
lose confidence, struggle to balance children and family. Naomi, I noticed,
does not have children, which made me wonder if that's about work.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 No, I cannot have children.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 Oh.



 NAOMI HALAS:
 
 So it's not that we didn't try. I am absolutely...I mean,
that's another thing that people do sometimes, look at someone who is childless
and say, "Well, you know, she...you know, you like science more than, you know,
children and flowers and, you know, things like that," you know? But no, I like
kids too.



 ROBERT KRULWICH:
 
 But what she doesn't like is that half the
kids, all the girls, still have trouble making the life that she has made. That
struggle isn't over.
</div>

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