CBITs at ISRII: Rachel Kornfield, PhD, Receives Rising Star Award
By Izabella Golley – July 31, 2025
Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs) core faculty member and Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine Rachel Kornfield, PhD has been awarded the 2025 Rising Star Award by the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII), recognizing her impactful contributions to digital mental health.
The Rising Star Award will be presented to Kornfield at the 2025 ISRII 13th Scientific Meeting, alongside fellow awardees Colleen Stiles-Shields, PhD, a former CBITs graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, from the University of Illinois Chicago and Frank Iorfino, PhD, from the University of Sydney, Brain and Mind Centre. CBITs has a strong history of representation at ISRII’s scientific meetings and this year, Kornfield will be joined by CBITs core faculty members Andrew Berry, PhD, and Jonah Meyerhoff, PhD, along with research staff members Sarah Popowski and Jack Svoboda, all of whom will present their individual and collaborative work at the conference.
Established in 2004, ISRII is a global, multidisciplinary organization dedicated to advancing digital technologies that support behavioral, psychosocial, physical, and mental health outcomes. Its diverse membership includes researchers, clinicians, software developers, economists, policy leaders, and industry partners from around the world. This year’s ISRII conference is titled, “Advancing Equity in Digital Interventions Across the Lifespan,” and will be held in San Diego August 4–7.
Each year, ISRII honors individuals for their contributions to the field of digital health and internet interventions across various career stages. The Rising Star Award specifically recognizes junior scholars whose work has made a measurable impact on the field. Kornfield designs and evaluates digital mental health tools aimed at creating real-world impact through interdisciplinary team science and human-centered design. Her work focuses on technologies that fit naturally into users’ daily lives, such as text messaging, to improve accessibility and engagement.
Reflecting on her work, Kornfield shared, “I have been studying supportive communication for many years, as well as how individuals use conversational systems like chatbots and, in some cases, build human-like relationships with them. Like many people, I am trying to figure out what advances in Artificial Intelligence mean for our field (and for humanity in general) and how to safely integrate large language models in our work.”
In 2021, Kornfield received a NIMH K01 Research Scientist Development Award to develop Small Steps SMS, a personalized text messaging tool that supports depression self-management using reinforcement learning. In collaboration with Mental Health America (MHA), the largest mental health nonprofit in the US, the program has reached over 5,000 individuals and is now being evaluated in a randomized trial, with ongoing efforts to integrate large language models and expand access to underserved populations. This work exemplifies the measurable impact recognized by ISRII’s Rising Star Award.
Comments Kornfield, “Many colleagues whose work I admire have received this award over the years, and it’s an honor to receive this recognition!”
At the conference, Kornfield will also share insights from her work as part of colleague Meyerhoff’s symposium titled “Scaling Digital Mental Health Access through Community-Based Organizations.” The symposium will focus on work done between CBITs and MHA to explore how partnerships between community-based organizations and digital mental health developers can expand access to evidence-based care by offering scalable, community-rooted solutions beyond traditional healthcare systems.
Kornfield’s talk, “Supporting Young Adult Mental Health through a Partnership with a Community-Based Organization: Experiences Designing and Deploying an Automated Text Messaging Tool,” will focus on her collaboration with MHA to design and deploy Small Steps SMS for young people engaging in online self-screening. Meyerhoff will present his work developed with MHA, “Extending a community-based organization’s suicide prevention services: Collaboration processes while co-designing an automated text messaging-based safety planning intervention,” which will describe the co-design of a scalable, text-based safety planning intervention for young people experiencing suicide-related thoughts. Additionally, core faculty member Kaylee Kruzan, PhD, will submit a recorded talk for the symposium, titled “Co-design of a digital intervention and dissemination pathway to address nonsuicidal self-injury.”
Aside from the symposium, research assistant Jack Svoboda will present a tech demo showcasing how generative AI can enhance the Small Steps text-messaging intervention by adding personalized, interactive content while maintaining the safety and structure of its rule-based system. Meyerhoff will also present a poster titled “Evaluating Small Steps: Results from a pilot Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trial,” that will examine whether personalization and human support enhance engagement and outcomes in a text-based digital mental health intervention for young adults with depression or anxiety who are not currently seeking treatment. Kruzan will also have a poster presented at the conference by her graduate student mentee, Connie W. Chau, titled “Engaged Exploration: A Method for User-Driven Feedback and Ideation in the Design of Digital Mental Health Interventions.”
Joining his colleagues, Berry will make four contributions to ISRII this year. He will co-lead a pre-conference workshop on applying human-centered design (HCD) methods to research proposals, offering practical guidance on how to integrate and communicate these approaches within grant-funded projects. He will also participate in a panel discussion exploring diverse approaches to HCD in behavioral intervention research, offering insights into practical challenges, best practices, and cross-disciplinary perspectives across clinical roles, populations, and settings.
In addition, Berry will contribute to two individual talks. “Expert Guidance on Doing User-Centered Design in Clinical Research with Older Adults,” will share insights from clinical researchers on balancing intentionality and adaptation when applying user-centered design with older adults, emphasizing community partnerships, culturally sensitive teams, and flexible methods that evolve with participant input over time. “Applying human-centered design methods to develop a technology-enabled pediatric gastrointestinal health service,” led by Bonnie Essner (Berry co-author), will explain an HCD study aimed at improving pediatric GI care by identifying opportunities for digital tools to enhance clinical assessment, communication, and shared decision-making across the adolescent patient-family journey.
Research coordinator Sarah Popowski will give two presentations at the conference. In a sounding board session, she will present “Digital Mental Health for Refugee Loneliness: A Human-Centered Design Study,” where she will seek input on adapting a digital mental health intervention, originally designed to address loneliness in a Dari/Farsi-speaking adult population in Sweden, to meet the needs of refugee and asylum-seeking populations in the U.S. In a separate 10-minute presentation, Popowski will share “Bridging Generational Gaps: The Role of Digital Mental Health Interventions in Supporting Adolescent Mental Health Help-Seeking." This presentation explores young adults’ perspectives on generational differences in attitudes toward mental health and how they believe digital mental health interventions can help bridge these gaps or encourage help-seeking across generations.
CBITs’ presence at ISRII 2025 showcases its leadership in advancing digital mental health. From faculty talks to collaborative tech demos, the center’s contributions reflect a commitment to impactful, evidence-based innovation.
For a full schedule of presentations, visit ISRII.org.