Ryan L. Melvin, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, has been appointed director of the newly-launched Heersink School of Medicine (SOM) Digital Service Unit (DSU), further elevating the department’s leadership role in advancing artificial intelligence initiatives across UAB. 
Ryan L. Melvin, Ph.D.
The announcement was shared publicly during a recent Heersink School of Medicine Office of Research Town Hall, where Melvin was introduced as director of the DSU, a school-wide resource dedicated to providing secure, institutionally approved AI tools and training to support research, education and administrative work.
“I’m honored to be the spokesperson for the incredibly talented group of folks who collaborated to make the AI tools website and subsequent DSU launch happen. The recognition this launch has brought to our department has been especially encouraging,” Melvin said. “I was particularly shocked with President Watts called us out by name during the recent Annual Heersink Leadership meeting for driving SOM AI initiatives.”
Launched April 29, 2026, the DSU serves as a cornerstone of the Artificial Intelligence for Medicine and Health Initiative (AIM+HI), helping expand access to AI resources for researchers, healthcare professionals and administrators across UAB and, ultimately, throughout Alabama.
The foundation for the DSU was built by the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine’s Emerging Technologies Team, led by Melvin and supported by team members Ryan Godwin, Ph.D., Kameshwari Soundararajan, and Prashant Sharma, along with critical contributions from Anesthesia IT and several department faculty. Their work transformed a department-driven innovation into a school-wide service that is now available to the UAB community.
The DSU currently offers a growing suite of institutionally approved AI tools designed to enhance research productivity and administrative efficiency. Available resources include enhanced literature and PubMed searches, proposal and grant critique tools, AI detection support, human subjects protocol drafting assistance, IRB development resources, promotion and tenure documentation support and article-to-podcast conversion capabilities.
Looking ahead, the DSU plans to introduce a secure AI assistant hosted within the UAB Medicine Azure environment, including HIPAA-compliant pathways for appropriate use cases. Additional offerings will include structured AI training and workforce development programs designed to improve AI literacy and responsible adoption across the institution.
“The half-life of AI knowledge and usefulness of individual AI tools is about two weeks given the current pace of advancement,” Melvin said. “We take the approach of throwing lots of things at the wall and seeing what sticks, and the results often surprise us.”