Dr. Michael Rahe, an assistant professor of immunology at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, has been chosen as a 2025-26 NC State Goodnight Early Career Innovator — an honor that recognizes and rewards young faculty members excelling in STEM roles across the university.

Rahe, who has both a DVM and a Ph.D. in immunology, leads a lab focused on researching the pathology and adaptive immune response to viral infections in livestock, primarily swine, to create better vaccines against costly disease outbreaks. The hog and pork-processing industry generates $11 billion in economic output and supports 46,000 jobs in North Carolina.

Rahe’s most recent research collaborations have moved us closer to creating a vaccine for the emerging Porcine Astrovirus 4 and helped explain why vaccines against porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome aren’t 100% effective: Vaccine-generated antibodies don’t recognize circulating strains of PRRSV, but T cells, which kill infected cells, do. T cells can’t stop infection, in the same way that antibodies can, but they can limit an infection resulting in a reduction in clinical disease. 

“Dr. Rahe is doing exciting work uncovering how the Porcine Astrovirus 4 causes respiratory disease in young pigs and also is helping the pig industry through his immunology work around PRRSV,” said Dr. Kaori Sakamoto, head of the CVM’s Department of Population Health and Pathobiology. “He is the perfect example of a translational researcher, working on everything from molecular mechanisms to diagnostic tests.”

NC State’s Goodnight Early Career Innovators are nominated by their colleges and selected by a committee of distinguished campuswide STEM faculty members. They also receive $22,000 for each of three years to support their scholarship and research.

“I am incredibly grateful to have received this honor, because it allows me to fund people and helps us do research,” said Rahe, who also teaches immunology to first-year veterinary students. “I’ve got fantastic people in my lab, from the manager through graduate students to veterinary and undergraduate students, and it’s just wonderful to have a big question and then let really smart, hard-working, driven people go after it. Working with them has been the best part of the job.”

A Trajectory of Leadership

Rahe joined NC State’s Department of Population Health and Pathobiology in 2023 after spending four years as an assistant professor in the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at Iowa State University. He achieved diplomate status within the American College of Veterinary Pathologists in 2021. 

In their letter nominating Rahe for the honor, Dr. Kate Meurs, Randall B. Terry Jr. Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, and Dr. Joshua Stern, associate dean for research and graduate studies, stressed that his combined rigorous training in comparative immunology, diagnostic pathology and public health creates a rare expertise, putting Rahe at the nexus of animal health, public health and translational biomedical research.

“In a very short time, he has distinguished himself as an innovator whose research has advanced both fundamental understanding of host-pathogen interactions and practical solutions to pressing challenges in animal and human health,” the letter said. “His work epitomizes the spirit of the Goodnight Award in demonstrating superior early-career productivity coupled with the vision and capacity to transform his field. We are confident that his trajectory points toward becoming a national leader in immunology of emerging pathogens and vaccine development.”

His lab’s current work includes investigating how vitamin D levels affect PRRSV vaccine efficacy in swine, research that Ph.D. student Kelly Grace Keen, a Goldsboro, North Carolina, native, is including as one of her doctoral projects. His lab also employs two veterinary students: Lindsey Britton, an Edenton, North Carolina, native and a National Pork Board scholar, and Molly Addison Jones, a Union County, North Carolina, native and a Food Animal Scholar.

Research into how vitamin D affects human health has found evidence that, in addition to bone strength, the vitamin also plays a key role in cellular aging, cardiovascular health and immunity. 

With most of today’s hogs raised indoors, the animals aren’t exposed to the sunlight that causes skin to produce vitamin D. Hog feed includes the vitamin, Rahe says, but typically only enough to forestall bone disease, so the lab is looking at whether additional supplementation of dietary vitamin D might improve immunity, too.

For the study, the lab is feeding some hogs a diet with the standard vitamin D levels and others a diet that increases the levels of their circulating vitamin D. After vaccinating the pigs, researchers will investigate how vitamin D levels affect their response to a PRRSV isolate from North Carolina.

“Will supplemented pigs develop a better antibody response?” Rahe asked. “We’re looking at that but then also looking at the cellular immune response, looking at their T cells, looking at their macrophages, trying to say, ‘Hey, are you a more effective killer of infectious agents than a non-supplemented diet?’”

A Tricky Twist

Rahe says the lab should have answers about whether vitamin D levels affect antibody response by March, but the cellular questions take more time and expertise.

“Working with those cells is so tricky because they die so easily,” he says. “It’s like a transplant so that when you take them out of the animal, they have to be under the perfect situation. Otherwise, you look at them wrong, and they die. That’s why my team and their expertise are so important.”

Sakamoto says NC State and the state of North Carolina are fortunate to have Rahe and his own expertise in Raleigh.

“Dr. Rahe has also emerged as a leader in our swine medicine team,” she said. “He has been organizing quarterly meetings with industry swine vets, in order to keep communication lines open and better serve the needs of North Carolina. We’re all eager to see how these collaborations advance our mission.”

Rahe also will be working on a second project on porcine epidemic diarrhea virus and PRRSV with Dr. Juliana Bonin Ferreira, clinical associate professor of swine health and production medicine, and Dr. Gustavo Machado, associate professor of emerging and transboundary diseases. 

Their first project verified that insufficiently cleaned trucks carrying hogs between facilities contribute to the spread of the PED virus. In December, the National Pork Board awarded a new grant to the group seeking a viability Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR test that can be used to detect whether infectious PEDV or PRRSV still exists in decontaminated trucks.

“It’s been fun to really dive into these questions,” Rahe said. “Hopefully, we’ll start to get some answers for the farmers of North Carolina. That’s really the goal, to take the research that we’re doing and apply it so that it doesn’t just sit at the university. That should be the mission of all of our land grant institutions like NC State.”