Dr. Maggie Horst is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California San Francisco with Prof. William DeGrado. Dr. Horst earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University (2024), exploring polymer mechanochemistry under the guidance of Prof. Yan Xia. Dr. Horst obtained a B.S. in Chemistry from Duke, researching with Profs. Katherine Franz and Stephen Craig (2018). Maggie has received many accolades including an NDSEG Fellowship and the ACS Centennial PMSE Future Leader Award.

2025 NASA Symp

Designing and understanding force-coupled reactions in polymers

Polymers that undergo programmed changes in chemical structure and physical properties in response to mechanical force represent a promising class of materials for extreme environments, controlled deconstruction, and a range of emerging applications. This research used synthesis of new force responsive repeat units, characterization of polymer reactivity and transformations, and computational models of force driven reactions to condense design principles for new polymeric materials and elucidate the chemistry of force-coupled reactions.