Impactful Partnerships
With a lab team that includes both benchtop researchers and bioinformatics experts, Dr. Xinxia Peng is a core collaborator across the state and country. Most recently, he received two NIH grants, one with Duke researching organ transplants and the other with an NC State scientist studying uterine function.
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Planning for our new Large Animal Veterinary Center is front and center at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, and we are looking forward to offering our clients access to a purpose-built facility designed for how advanced veterinary medicine is practiced today — and what it will demand in the decades ahead.
The new and renovated facility will offer:
• A dedicated emergency and colic wing where horses in crisis can be admitted, stabilized and moved directly to surgery within the same connected space.
• An expanded ruminant and farm animal facility that accommodates more patients and allows for more space to maneuver cattle.
• A sports medicine pavilion with a covered arena, specialized surfaces for lameness evaluation and state-of-the-art imaging technology — including MRI, a standing CT scanner, CT myelography capabilities and nuclear scintigraphy — that continues NC State’s reputation as one of the go-to premier medical facilities for performance horse owners on the East Coast.
• Three operating rooms that will allow emergency and elective procedures to proceed simultaneously — something the current facility cannot accommodate.
• A new isolation pavilion that will expand our capacity to contain infectious disease outbreaks, protecting every patient in the hospital and every large animal in the surrounding community.
• Natural light in every stall. Flooring designed to reduce stress and prevent injury.
• Spaces built for clear communication between clinical teams. A client entry designed to be welcoming and easy to navigate, especially in the middle of the night — because emergencies don’t wait for daylight.
The expanded and updated facility also means more students in the space, more cases observed, more skills developed — and more specialists entering a field that desperately needs them.
Stay tuned!
“People reach out to us because they know that if they have a question, we can take it from the beginning to the end.”
What Dr. Xinxia Peng and his lab bring to a plethora of potentially life-changing projects is a rarity: a truly interdisciplinary team with the expertise to both conduct wet-lab experiments with various biological samples and to provide the dry-lab bioinformatics computations on genetic codes within those samples that lead to biological discoveries.
A professor of infectious diseases at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, Peng is an expert on genomics and bioinformatics and has developed research partnerships with scientists across the state and country. Most recently, he’s received two NIH grants, one partnering with Duke researching organ transplants and the other with an NC State scientist studying uterine function.
At its most basic, bioinformatics is a field that combines computer science, mathematics and biology to analyze and interpret complex biological data like DNA and protein sequences.
Peng’s investigations include trying to understand the role genetics play in how an individual patient responds to immunity-related therapeutics.
“At an educational institution, setting up this interdisciplinary research, both in terms of actual research and the group members, so that it makes us a place that people will come and say, ‘Hey, we want to collaborate,’” he said, “to me is really very satisfying.”
Learn more at the link in our bio.
https://go.ncsu.edu/peng
NC State College of Veterinary Medicine hit the road to provide veterinary support at Sampson Showdown — a livestock show hosted by Sampson County 4-H and N.C. Cooperative Extension.
N.C. Cooperative Extension is a joint effort among NC State, N.C. A&T, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and local governments across the state. At Sampson Showdown, 4-H participants of all ages competed with a variety of livestock animals. Drs. Tomas Gonzalez, Danielle Mzyk and Michael Center made sure the animals were healthy and disease-free before they entered the facility.
NC State has extension offices in all 100 counties and the Eastern Band of Cherokee, serving as a resource for every corner of the state, both urban and rural, providing:
🔬Research-backed information to industry
🍎 Health and nutrition outreach programs to communities
🍀 4-H youth development for kids and teens
Children and teens of all ages gathered at NC State for Horseman`s Youth Day! 🐎
The Student Chapter of the American Association of Equine Practitioners hosted the event at our Reedy Creek Equine Farm in Raleigh, running hands-on workshops on anatomy, farriery (applying horseshoes), internal medicine, dentistry, emergency care and sports medicine.
With a nationwide shortage of equine practitioners, Horseman’s Youth Day is just one way NC State and our students engage with the community to build interest in becoming a veterinarian. 🩺
Our third-year students have returned from veterinary practices all over the country — part of the new DVM curriculum that provides veterinary students with additional hands-on experience prior to their fourth-year rotations.
Unlike summer externships where students send out applications and interview for positions, NC State does the legwork securing these four-week preceptorships.
Locking down arrangements for more than 100 students at the same time may sound daunting, but our doctors-to-be are in high demand, and over 225 practices wanted to participate.
The class of 2028 spread out across 27 states and 60 North Carolina counties. Students spent four days each week working with clients and one day journaling and attending Zoom seminars with fellow class members.
Upon returning, the students attended a debrief to share feedback on the experience, and they will give presentations on their work later this fall.
Read about some of their experiences here: https://go.ncsu.edu/2028-preceptorships
The NC State veterinary class of 2030 includes the first-ever cohort of students in the Equine Scholars Program.
The highly competitive program selects six undergraduate students and two alternates from partner North Carolina universities who then complete summer internships shadowing equine practitioners. Completing the program’s requirements grants guaranteed admission to the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Less than 4% of veterinary students go into equine medicine, and there is a shortage of equine and large animal practitioners.
“We are really hopeful that the Equine Scholars Program will help to address the need for equine primary care veterinarians in North Carolina,” says Dr. Katie Sheats, associate dean and director of Professional Education and Admissions.
Members of the second cohort — all college seniors and one recent graduate — completed their internships this summer and are on track to join the class of 2031 next fall. The program, created in 2024, is based on NC State’s Food Animal Scholars initiative, which similarly recruits undergraduates with an interest in food animal medicine.
Meet the scholars at the link in our bio.
https://go.ncsu.edu/first-equine-class
Whether they grew up in the saddle or have never stepped foot in a barn, a group including many of our first-year veterinary students took to the field to learn and refine important safety techniques with NC State’s equine experts and horses.
Organized by NC State’s Student Chapter of the American Association of Equine Practitioners and led by professionals at our Reedy Creek Equine Farm, this lab taught our students safe practices for approaching and standing around horses, the basics of grooming and leading, and proper technique for picking up a horse’s hoof.
Equine medicine is one of five specialty areas our veterinary students can focus in, and extracurricular events like this are important to help foster interest in large animal medicine — an area with a growing shortage of veterinarians.
NC State is committed to addressing that shortage.
To that end, we’re investing heavily in the future of equine medicine. Our new large animal veterinary center will be a state-of-the-art facility for training the next generation of large animal practitioners and will elevate the world-class care we already provide for the entire region.
Go to the link in our bio to learn how we`re building that future, together.
https://go.ncsu.edu/lavc
Today marks 45 years since the first class of veterinary students arrived at NC State’s new School of Veterinary Medicine — what it was called until it and many other NC State “schools” were designated colleges six years later.
The class of 40 students, all from North Carolina, would go on to become the state’s first locally trained veterinarians since the establishment of modern accreditation. Prior to the opening of our college, the state government had to make arrangements to send students elsewhere in the country to receive formal veterinary education.
Now, NC State is among the top veterinary colleges in the country and attracts students and faculty from all over the world.
Our veterinary students traveled the world this summer, taking their lessons into real life and getting hands-on experience through externships, the NC State Veterinary Scholars Program and volunteer opportunities! Our #FromTheField correspondents kept us up to date on their activities, with three of them traveling internationally.
Read their dispatches at the link in our bio.
https://go.ncsu.edu/ftf-2026
