Medical AI is easy to demo and hard to trust. The KEV.AI Lab works the gap in between.
We acquire expert clinical knowledge, represent it in ways machines can reason over, and validate that the systems we build preserve what the experts meant. That work spans two frontiers:
Across both, the commitment is the same: AI systems for medicine must be rigorous, auditable, and worthy of the patients and learners who depend on them.
KEV.AI is not a typical academic lab. Every member is a working clinician, engineer, or operator who has shipped products, founded companies, or built enterprise systems in healthcare. We believe the sharpest insights about AI in medicine come from contact with real users, real data, and real regulatory environments — not from theory alone.
See the Team →
Vanderbilt University Medical Center • Nashville, TN
Knowledge Engineering & Validation for AI in medicine. We build the methods that make medical expertise computable — and trustworthy.
Based in the Section of Surgical Sciences and the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Chief Technology Officer, SchoolMe Researcher, Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center ORCID: 0000-0003-1503-2163 • LinkedIn Bio Adria Abella Villafranca is a mechanical engineer and the technical lead behind SchoolMe’s AI-powered medical education platform. Before moving into full-time startup leadership, Adria spent six years as Data Warehouse Administrator at the UAMS Institute for Digital Health & Innovation, where he built and maintained the research data infrastructure that powered dozens of peer-reviewed studies and multiple patents in waveform analysis, surgical informatics, and medical device development. ...
Chief Operating Officer, SchoolMe Assistant Research Professor, Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Adjunct Associate Professor, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University Co-Founder, Head of Innovation & Impact, Head of Responsible AI — Avante LinkedIn • ORCID • Google Scholar Bio Carly Eckert is a physician, epidemiologist, and clinical informaticist whose career sits at the intersection of healthcare AI, responsible technology development, and health system innovation. She trained as an MD, completed general surgery residency at Vanderbilt, and earned her MPH and PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Washington. ...
Chief Medical Education Officer & Board Chairman, SchoolMe Assistant Dean for Simulation in Medical Education, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Director, Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment (CELA) Professor of Medicine and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Vanderbilt University Director, Science and Technology of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab USA ORCID: 0000-0001-8654-7290 • LinkedIn • STORM Lab • Vanderbilt Profile Bio Keith Obstein is a gastroenterologist, medical device inventor, and medical education scientist who sits at the rare intersection of clinical medicine, mechanical engineering, and adult learning theory. He was recruited to Vanderbilt in 2010 to develop an endoscopic technologies program and now holds primary appointments in both Medicine and Mechanical Engineering. ...
Director, KEV.AI Lab Professor of Surgery and Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Helen and Nicholas Abumrad Director | Vice Chair for Innovation, Section of Surgical Sciences CEO & Co-Founder, SchoolMe kevin.sexton@vumc.org • LinkedIn • ORCID • Google Scholar Bio Kevin Sexton is a trauma and acute care surgeon, board-certified clinical informaticist, and healthcare AI entrepreneur. He directs the KEV.AI Lab at VUMC, where he leads research at the intersection of surgery, clinical informatics, and artificial intelligence, and serves as Vice Chair for Innovation in the Section of Surgical Sciences. ...