Karthik V. Sarma MD PhD

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I am a computational health scientist and practicing clinical psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, where I founded the UCSF AI in Mental Health Research Group (AIMHealth). I am also co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at SimX. Previously, I was mentored by Atul Butte at UCSF and by Corey Arnold at UCLA. I am affiliated with the UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at UCSF.

At UCSF, my research focuses on the development of novel artificial intelligence techniques for clinical applications, with a focus on using large language models to interpret patient and clinical text, perform clinical reasoning, and assist in the delivery of clinical care. I have been involved in projects examining the psychiatric knowledge base encoded in latest-generation LLMs, evaluating approaches for guided LLM reasoning in diagnosis, measuring the mental health impact and safety of LLM-based chatbots, developing new methods for using LLM-based agents to interact with the electronic health record, and designing new systems for constraining LLMs to act within acceptable clinical parameters across a wide variety of settings.

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 and am co-chair of the Informatics Caucus. 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, the Butte Lab at UCSF, and the UCLA Biomedical AI Research Lab.

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. Paper
    Assessing the Accuracy and Reliability of Large Language Models in Psychiatry Using Standardized Multiple-Choice Questions: Cross-Sectional Study
    Hanss, K. E.,  Sarma, K. V., Glowinski, A. L., Krystal, A., Saunders, R., Halls, A. J. M., Gorrell, S., and Reilly, E.
    Journal of Medical Internet Research May 2025
    Link
  2. 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 May 2024
  3. 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 May 2024
    Winner, 2024 APA Medical Student/Resident Poster Competition
  4. 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
  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