Karthik V. Sarma MD PhD

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I am co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at SimX. I am also a computational medical scientist and practicing clinical psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, where I work with Dr. Atul Butte and Dr. Andrew Krystal.

At UCSF, my research focuses on the development of novel artificial intelligence techniques for behavioral health applications, with a focus using large language models to interpret patient and clinical text, perform psychiatric reasoning, and assist in the delivery of clinical care.

At SimX, I lead technology strategy and the company’s advanced development division, which focuses on next-generation technology projects in artificial intelligence and extended reality. I also founded our internal modeling and simulation research laboratory, the Virtual Advancement of Learning for Operational Readiness (VALOR) Program. Prior to the acquisition of the company by Madison Industries, I served as Principal Investigator for our $20M+ extramurally funded research program aimed at improving the art and science of virtual medical simulation training.

I am also a member of the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association (AMA), where I represent the American Psychiatric Association. I am also a member of the House of Delegates of the California Medical Association (CMA) and its Councils on Medical Service and Legislation. Previously, I was a member of the Board of Trustees of the AMA and CMA, and a computational medical scientist at the UCLA Biomedical AI Research Lab where I worked with Dr. Corey Arnold.

I received my MD PhD from UCLA, and my BS (Hons) from the California Institute of Technology. I currently live in San Francisco, CA and am a native of Chicago, IL.

selected publications

  1. Abs
    Improving the Performance of LLM-Based Semi-Automated Psychiatric Case Diagnosis using Decision Tree-Based Prompting
    Sarma, Karthik V, Hanss, Kaitlin E., Glowinski, Anne L., Butte, Atul J., and Halls, Andrew J. M.
    In American Medical Informatics Association Annual Meeting 2024
  2. Abs
    Grading the Machine: Assessing ChatGPT’s Psychiatric Knowledge through Boards-Style Assessment
    Hanss, Kaitlin E*,  Sarma, Karthik V*, Saunders, Ramotse, and Elkin, David
    In American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting 2024
    Winner, 2024 APA Medical Student/Resident Poster Competition
  3. Paper
    Integrating Battlefield Documentation into Virtual Reality Medical Simulation Training: Virtual Battlefield Assisted Trauma Distributed Observation Kit (BATDOK)
    Sarma, Karthik V, Barrie, Michael G, Dorsch, John R, Andre, Tanner W, Polson, Jennifer S, Ribeira, Rosie J, Andre, Tyler B, and Ribeira, Ryan J
    Military Medicine Nov 2023
    Link
  4. Conf
    XR Medical Simulation Training for the Future of Warfare: The Virtual Advancement of Learning for Operational Readiness (VALOR) Program
    Sarma, Karthik V., Barrie, Michael, Dorsch, John R., Weiss, Talia L., Polson, Jennifer S., and Ribeira, Ryan J.
    In International Training Technology Exhibition and Conference (IT2EC) Nov 2022
    Winner, Best Paper, IT2EC 2022
  5. Paper
    Federated learning improves site performance in multicenter deep learning without data sharing
    Sarma, Karthik V, Harmon, Stephanie, Sanford, Thomas, Roth, Holger R, Xu, Ziyue, Tetreault, Jesse, Xu, Daguang, Flores, Mona G, Raman, Alex G, Kulkarni, Rushikesh, Wood, Bradford J, Choyke, Peter L, Priester, Alan M, Marks, Leonard S, Raman, Steven S, Enzmann, Dieter, Turkbey, Baris, Speier, William, and Arnold, Corey W
    Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Feb 2021
    Link
  6. Paper
    Harnessing clinical annotations to improve deep learning performance in prostate segmentation
    Sarma, Karthik V., Raman, Alex G., Dhinagar, Nikhil J., Priester, Alan M., Harmon, Stephanie, Sanford, Thomas, Mehralivand, Sherif, Turkbey, Baris, Marks, Leonard S., Raman, Steven S., Speier, William, and Arnold, Corey W.
    PLOS ONE Jun 2021
    Link