Aartik Sarma

Aartik Sarma, MD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine and Affiliate Faculty in the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health. As an intensive care physician and pulmonologist, Dr. Sarma directs a research program focused on understanding why patients with the same disease exhibit such varied responses to treatments and why many promising preclinical therapies fail in large clinical trials.

Dr. Sarma's educational background includes:

• Brown University (ScB 2008): Public Policy, Biomedical Engineering
• Harvard Medical School (MD 2014)
• Massachusetts General Hospital (Residency 2017): Internal Medicine
• UCSF (Fellowship 2020): Pulmonology and Critical Care Medicine
• UCSF (MAS 2023): Clinical and Epidemiologic Research

His research employs multi-omic and computational tools to study critical illness syndromes across a wide spectrum, from characterizing molecular features of preclinical disease models to predicting individualized treatment effects in ICU clinical trials and identifying algorithmic biases in large observational datasets. Dr. Sarma's work primarily focuses on acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis, COPD, pneumonia, and the impacts of air pollution and viral infections like COVID-19.

Analysis of Dr. Sarma's recent publications reveals a strong emphasis on molecular phenotyping of critical illnesses, particularly ARDS and sepsis, using advanced genomic and multi-omic approaches. His research consistently bridges basic science with clinical applications, with numerous studies examining how biological mechanisms translate to clinical outcomes and treatment responses. A notable trend is his work on identifying subphenotypes within critical illness syndromes that respond differently to therapies, supporting the move toward precision critical care medicine.

Dr. Sarma has received significant recognition for his work:

• American Society for Clinical Investigation Emerging Generation Award (2023)

He is supported by a K23 Career Development Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI K23HL163491) and previously held an NIH F32 training grant. Dr. Sarma serves as co-chair for the American Thoracic Society's Workshop on research standards for respiratory tract sampling and contributes as a site investigator for multiple clinical studies. His interdisciplinary approach connects researchers from cell biology to labor economics, reflecting his commitment to team science in advancing human health.

Dr. Sarma's laboratory work focuses on integrating multi-omic data with clinical information to understand critical illness heterogeneity. His team utilizes transcriptomic, metagenomic, and clinical data to identify molecular signatures that predict disease progression and treatment response. This work is conducted through collaborations with the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Computational Precision Health and the COMET Consortium, which focuses on multi-omic approaches to understanding critical illness.