Dr. Stella de Lima Camargo joined Dr. Jonathan Chekan’s biochemistry lab as a postdoctoral scholar in Jan 2022. In the 6 months since she has been here, Stella has made impressive progress on her research project. Stella has been investigating the biosynthesis of cyclic peptides from plants. These molecules have promising biological properties including anti-viral or pain relief. In her short time, Stella has discovered that the pathway for making these compounds is widely distributed in plants. Using these insights, she predicted and then validated that previously undiscovered cyclic peptides are present in the important crop Coffea arabica. A manuscript describing her work, along with others in the lab, is being prepared and will be submitted shortly.