Put NC State’s Pilot VetRISE Program for High Schoolers in the Win Column

The 11 North Carolina teens who spent five weeks immersed in research labs at the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine impressed their faculty mentors, helped with important projects and presented their findings so well that the college has committed to offering the program again next year.

July 20, 2026 Burgetta Eplin Wheeler 5-min. read

A woman in a white T shirt and jeans sits on top of a sculpture of a dog's head as teenagers wearing the same shirt surround her. — Dr. Margaret Gruen, center, was the driving force behind the creation of VetRISE, a summer research program for North Carolina high schoolers.

The study has ended, the data is in and the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine is pleased to release the results:

Our inaugural VetRISE summer program offering 11 North Carolina high schoolers an opportunity to immerse themselves in research with some of our most prominent scientists was a success in every category.

The findings:

For Zoe Georgoulias of Raleigh, the five-week experience introduced her to previously unknown careers helping animals without having to cut on them.
Hansika Malapati, who works part-time at a veterinary clinic in Charlotte, amassed answers to many questions and cemented her plans to become a veterinarian.
Aarav Mehta of Fayetteville is taking away the critical life lesson that not everything goes perfectly and patience is essential.

The conclusion: NC State will offer the program again next summer.

“The students were all amazing, and the mentors were incredible, just so supportive of the program and of the students and welcomed them in,” said Dr. Margaret Gruen, a board-certified veterinary behaviorist at NC State who led the creation of the Veterinary Research Internship for Scientific Exploration program or VetRISE. “The students put together incredible posters about their research. I think they all learned a lot going through it, and I think we learned a lot about what we can do even better next year.”

A group of high school students listen as a woman in a white and blue striped shirt talks to them inside a lab. — The five-week summer VetRISE program started with a day of orientation into the workings of a research lab. Photos by John Joyner / NC State Veterinary Medicine

A woman in a black T shirt wearing glasses and blue gloves holds a syringe as another woman in a dark shirt watches. A man in a blue shirt sits far right.

A group of students walks out of a glass and brick building.

Georgoulias, a student at Sanderson High School in Raleigh, and Malapati, who attends the NC School of Science and Math online, both worked in Gruen’s lab but on different canine studies. Mehta, a student at the NCSSM in Morganton, crunched years of data from the NC State Veterinary Hospital to help Dr. Cristina Lanzas, professor of infectious diseases, ascertain levels of antimicrobial resistance in patients.

“My biggest finding was that staph infection had a 41% resistance rate in the canine species, while E. coli had a 17.5% resistance rate in the feline species,” Mehta said as he and the other students presented their posters detailing their findings at a closing gathering last week.

At the hospital, patients are tested for antimicrobial resistance before they are prescribed antibiotics, and Mehta summarized hospital testing data from the past several years to check for trends.

“From Day One, it was very clear that he was somebody who was very eager to learn quickly,” said Lanzas, who admitted that she and the graduate students in her lab were a little leery of mentoring a high school student. “We are quite impressed with what he’s been able to do in just a few weeks.”

‘The Answer is Yes!’

Mehta, who hopes to be a physician, said participating in VetRISE helped cement his interests in pharmaceutical research and anesthesia and teach him perseverance.

“What I took away is to make sure, first, that you’re patient,” he said. “Stuff will not go your way 100% of the time, so you will have to work around things. I was working with Python and coding, which was giving me a lot of headaches, but being able to continue working and see all of my research on this poster is really rewarding.”

In Gruen’s lab, Malapati was mentored by Dr. Morgan Ferrans, a post-doctoral researcher who helped Gruen launch the VetRISE program. Malapati, who plans to be a veterinarian, assisted in determining whether testing a dog’s gait on a pressure-sensitive walkway could point to an osteoarthritis diagnosis as well as an X-ray.

“I used the walkway to detect weight distribution changes in each limb and to see if we could maybe, not replace radiographs, but have a good alternative because X-rays are so invasive and require sedation,” said Malapati, who noted she had been struck by how much the researchers cuddled the dogs in the study. “And the answer is yes! VetRISE is a great opportunity for anyone just to learn about research and how a lab works.”

Hansika Malapati with long dark hair and wearing a white T shirt gestures toward a poster hanging on a cork board as another student in a white shirt listens. — Hansika Malapati, a Charlotte resident who attends the NC School of Science and Math online, explains her work.

Zoe Georgoulias in white T shirt gestures toward a poster hanging on a cork board as a woman wearing purple listens. — Zoe Georgoulias, who attends Sanderson High School in Raleigh, highlights her research on canine olfaction.

Aarav Mehta of Fayetteville, far right, attends the NC School of Science and Math in Morganton and worked with Dr. Cristina Lanzas to chart trends in antimicrobial resistance in NC State Veterinary Hospital patients. At left, Anay Hapani, who worked with Dr. Caroline McKinney, a research assistant professor, in the lab of Dr. Liara Gonzales, professor of gastroenterology and equine surgery, explains his research to Dr. Natasha Olby, professor of neurology and neurosurgery, who also mentored students in her lab on aging.

Georgoulias said that she always has had a passion for caring for animals but that a weak stomach led her to believe she could never pursue veterinary medicine as a career.

“It was really cool for me to find out about this research opportunity, which isn’t so gory but is still helping them,” she said. “I’m confident that I can see myself working in a research lab now where I can still work hands-on with animals, which is my favorite part. I learned so many new perspectives that I didn’t know were there before, which was really valuable.”

‘A Really Healthy Dynamic’

Georgoulias spent her time in Gruen’s lab helping test the olfactory abilities of adult and senior dogs, with the goal being to develop ways to measure functional ability so that a decrease could be used as a diagnostic tool for aging pets.

“We know dogs are similar to humans, like age and disease can decrease olfaction health, so we were looking to see if we can develop tests to use in the clinical setting if we think a dog might be getting a disease,” she said. “There’s not a whole lot of research for canine olfaction, despite how important it is for both dogs and humans, so if we can test to see if their olfaction health is declining, then we do the more extensive or expensive test next.”

Georgoulias worked closely with Julianna Lott and Jennifer Thompson, two current NC State veterinary students interning in Gruen’s lab as part of the college’s Veterinary Scholars Program. More than 70 veterinary students have spent their summer conducting research in the labs of numerous NC State experts, too.

“While they were teaching me, they really felt like coworkers or even friends,” Georgoulias said. “They were always willing to answer any questions I had, or if I ever had any they couldn’t answer, they’re like, ‘Well, here’s who you can ask’ or ‘There’s something over here you can read.’ It was really, really cool, a really healthy dynamic.”

If the VetRISE program’s goal was to have a big impact and show younger people the different sides of veterinary medicine, Georgoulias said, objective achieved.

“Whenever people would ask me what I’m doing this summer, I would tell them about this, and every time, they were like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool! I didn’t know you could do that,’” she said. “And I was like, “Yeah, I didn’t, either, but now I do.’”