Margaret Hilton attended Trinity University in San Antonio, TX to complete her bachelors degree in chemistry. Participating in summer research at Trinity in organic and inorganic chemistry with Profs. Nancy Mills and Bert Chandler, respectively, she realized a passion for learning through asking questions. Thus, she pursued a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Utah under the supervision of Prof. Matthew Sigman, graduating in 2017. In the Sigman group, Margaret studied and optimized several enantioselective palladium-catalyzed reactions, focusing on understanding mechanisms and underlying origins of selectivity using classical and modern techniques.

For her postdoctoral studies, Margaret worked in Prof. Scott Miller’s lab at Yale University, investigating peptide catalysts for the late stage modification of natural products, namely site selective epoxidation of geldanamycin.

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Margaret joins the Department of Chemistry at West Virginia University in Summer 2020. Her lab explores catalyst design for the development of site- and enantioselective organic transformations, the derivatization of functional group-rich targets, and tools for understanding reaction mechanisms and molecular recognition.