Ian Steenstra smiling in a navy blazer and light blue shirt

Ian Steenstra, Ph.D.

Co-Founder & Head of AI at One Small Step

Building safe, clinically grounded AI for mental health support.

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About Me

I am a research scientist and engineer focused on the safe application of AI for mental health support. I am the Co-Founder and Head of AI at One Small Step, leading our development of AI-assisted tools for certified human peer support within the Medicaid behavioral health ecosystem, including a mental health world model that runs live in every peer support session, alerts the peer to potential risk, and automatically escalates to a clinical supervisor when needed.

I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northeastern University, advised by Dr. Timothy Bickmore. My dissertation introduced an evaluation framework for assessing quality of care and risk in AI psychotherapy, using simulated patients to stress-test AI therapists. My work on LLM-powered counseling agents has appeared at ACM CHI and IVA, including an IVA 2024 Best Paper Award. Before my Ph.D., I was a software engineer at Wayfair, building distributed services for its customer notification platform.

  • Clinical AI safety: automated red teaming, risk ontologies, and evaluation of AI therapists.
  • Simulated users: cognitive-affective patient simulations for evaluation, counselor training, and RLAIF.
  • Conversational & embodied agents: LLM-driven virtual agents and robots for health counseling.

News

Experience

Co-Founder & Head of AI

January 2026 - Present
One Small Step

Leading our company's mission toward safe and reliable AI solutions for mental health support.

  • Mental Health World Model: Runs live in every peer support session across our network of certified peer specialists supporting people with addiction and serious mental illness, alerting the peer to potential risk and automatically escalating to a clinical supervisor when needed.
  • Inception Studio: Selected for Cohort 23 (2026).

Graduate Research Assistant (Ph.D.)

September 2022 - December 2025
Northeastern University

Research focused on the safe, clinical application of Generative AI, culminating in the development, deployment, and clinical validation of counseling agents.

  • Agentic AI: Engineered multi-modal generative agents (LLMs, Robotics, Avatars) for health interventions. Investigated the evolution of relational dynamics between humans and AI over time to optimize for therapeutic outcomes.
  • Clinical Grounding: Validated agent behavior through human-subject experiments with patients and clinical professionals.
  • Simulated Stress-Testing: Created automated evaluation frameworks utilizing multi-agent user simulators. Applied cognitive-affective modeling to fine-tune LLMs, improving safety against adversarial or high-risk patient inputs.
  • Best Paper Award (ACM IVA 2024): Recognized for work on LLM-powered motivational interviewing for alcohol use counseling.

Software Engineer II (promoted from Software Engineer I, March 2022)

October 2020 - September 2022
Wayfair

Architected and scaled distributed microservices for Wayfair's notification platform, delivering billions of emails, push notifications, and SMS messages annually.

  • Cloud Migration: Led my team's migration of legacy monoliths to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) microservices, improving reliability and observability.
  • Personalization: Partnered with marketing and data science teams to design and launch microservices for personalized notification content and delivery.
  • Innovation: Won 1st Place and the Best Idea Award at Wayfair hackathons for "Dynamic Pricing & Content in Emails" and a "Two-Way Notifications & Data Analysis Tool."

Freelance Machine Learning Engineer

June 2020 - September 2020
Upwork
To stay productive during the COVID pandemic, I executed rapid-prototype machine learning projects for diverse clients (e.g., computer vision, time-series forecasting).

Undergraduate Research Assistant

September 2016 - May 2020
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Developed multimodal AI systems (VQA, BiGRUs) to power interactive avatars for the IBM/RPI "Mandarin Project." [video]

  • Enabled avatars to perform open-domain scene understanding within a 360° immersive classroom, successfully deployed for the university’s first AI-assisted language course.
  • Previous RPI Roles: Research Team Lead for CURENT (Smart Grid Tech), RPI Engineering Ambassador.

Software Engineer Intern

June 2019 - August 2019
Wayfair
Engineered a multi-armed bandit recommendation system that drove $300k+ in daily incremental revenue. The system was later described by the Wayfair team in a RecSys '23 industry paper (Chen et al.).

Data Analytics Engineer Intern

May 2018 - August 2018
Pratt & Whitney
Developed machine learning models to optimize failure detection for jet engine airfoils, contributing to an automated quality assurance system deployed across manufacturing lines.

Publications

300+ citations, h-index 9 on Google Scholar (as of October 2026).

2026

  • Designing for Adolescent Voice in Health Decisions: Embodied Conversational Agents for HPV Vaccination.
    Steenstra, I., Patkar, N., Perkins, R. B., Paasche-Orlow, M. K., & Bickmore, T.
    Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26), Barcelona. Poster
    paper arXiv news
  • Assessing Risks of Large Language Models in Mental Health Support: A Framework for Automated Clinical AI Red Teaming.
    Steenstra, I., Pedrelli, P., Shi, W., Marsella, S., & Bickmore, T.
    arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.19948. Preprint
    paper code dataset (Hugging Face) dataset (Kaggle) HF paper page

2025

  • An Evaluation Framework for Assessing Quality of Care & Risk in AI Psychotherapy.
    Steenstra, I.
    Ph.D. Dissertation, Northeastern University. Dissertation
    paper DOI defense code
  • A Risk Ontology for Evaluating AI-Powered Psychotherapy Virtual Agents.
    Steenstra, I., & Bickmore, T.
    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA '25), Berlin. Poster
    paper extended version (arXiv)
  • Scaffolding Empathy: Training Counselors with Simulated Patients and Utterance-level Performance Visualizations.
    Steenstra, I., Nouraei, F., & Bickmore, T.
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25).
    paper arXiv talk demo prompts news

2024

  • Virtual Agents for Alcohol Use Counseling: Exploring LLM-Powered Motivational Interviewing.
    Steenstra, I., Nouraei, F., Arjmand, M., & Bickmore, T.
    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA '24). Best Paper Award
    paper arXiv prompts
  • Empathic Grounding: Explorations using Multimodal Interaction and Large Language Models with Conversational Agents.
    Arjmand, M., Nouraei, F., Steenstra, I., & Bickmore, T.
    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA '24).
    paper arXiv
  • Engaging and Entertaining Adolescents in Health Education Using LLM-Generated Fantasy Narrative Games and Virtual Agents.
    Steenstra, I., Murali, P., Perkins, R. B., Joseph, N., Paasche-Orlow, M. K., & Bickmore, T.
    Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24). Late-Breaking Work
    paper news

2023

  • Changing Parent Attitudes Towards HPV Vaccination by Including Adolescents in Multiparty Counseling using Virtual Agents.
    Steenstra, I., Murali, P., Perkins, R., Joseph, N., Paasche-Orlow, M., & Bickmore, T.
    ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA '23).
    paper
  • Improving Multiparty Interactions with a Robot Using Large Language Models.
    Murali, P., Steenstra, I., Yun, H. S., Shamekhi, A., & Bickmore, T.
    Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '23). Late-Breaking Work
    paper news

2020

  • Multimodal Dialogue State Tracking By QA Approach with Data Augmentation.
    Mou, X., Sigouin, B., Steenstra, I., & Su, H.
    DSTC8 Workshop at AAAI-20. arXiv:2007.09903. Workshop
    paper

2019

  • Evolution of Activities in a Smart Grid Summer Camp for High School STEM Students (Evaluation).
    Douglas, D. J., Steenstra, I. S., et al.
    ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Tampa.
    paper videos

Portfolio & Projects

Clinical AI Red Teaming

  • LLM Safety
  • Simulated Patients
  • Open Source

Open-source framework for stress-testing AI therapists. Simulated patients with alcohol use disorder hold multi-session therapy with AI agents while automated evaluators score quality of care and risk. Plug in your own model and explore the results in an interactive dashboard.

Code Paper Dataset Defense
Presenting the Scaffolding Empathy paper at CHI 2025

SimPatient: Counselor Training

  • LLMs
  • Multi-Agent
  • Counselor Training

LLM-powered simulated patient with alcohol use disorder that lets counselors practice motivational interviewing, with utterance-level visual feedback on their performance (CHI 2025).

Code Paper Demo
Animated virtual counselor in a green sweater standing in an illustrated therapy office

LLM Alcohol Counselor

  • LLMs
  • Motivational Interviewing
  • Best Paper

Virtual counselor capable of conducting motivational interviewing (MI) for alcohol use counseling using LLMs. Best Paper Award at IVA 2024.

Prompts Paper
Person facing a Furhat social robot with a back-projected face

Embodied Clinical AI (Furhat Robotics)

  • LLMs
  • Robotics
  • Affective Computing

Engineered a physical robotic patient for in-person counselor training. Integrated GPT-4o with appraisal theory to generate real-time emotions and non-verbal behaviors, bridging high-latency LLM inference with low-latency robotic control. A user study revealed a paradox: making the AI patient more emotionally realistic can decrease counselor empathy.

Code
Virtual agent holding an owl picture in a glowing mushroom forest, with multiple-choice answers below

LLM Fantasy Narrative Games

  • Generative AI
  • Games for Health

Developed a methodology for rapidly creating physician-validated health education games for adolescents (e.g., HPV vaccination) using virtual agents and LLMs.

Paper
Illustration of two digital humanoids labeled AI Simulated Patient and AI Simulated Therapist

Online RLAIF for Patient Harm

  • LLMs
  • Reinforcement Learning

Online, on-policy Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback pipeline that fine-tunes LLM therapeutic agents during live conversations, using simulated patients with cognitive-affective models of the psychological harm they experience over time.

Code
Virtual guide standing in a bright 3D art gallery with colorful paintings

AI Art Therapy Game

  • Generative AI
  • Unreal Engine 5

3D art therapy game where an LLM-powered museum director uses motivational interviewing to talk through alcohol use, culminating in AI-generated artwork created in real time from the conversation.

Code Demo
Vintage phrenology-style bust with highlighted brain regions

Cognitive AI & Self-Identity Modeling

  • Cognitive Architecture
  • AI Alignment

Exploring theories behind simulated consciousness and dynamic self-identities in AI. Features multi-head cognitive attention and hierarchical self-models.

Code
Painted-style illustration of a robot on an easel surrounded by social media icons

Generative AI Content Creator

  • Generative AI
  • Social Media

Creating viral Veo 3 videos with prompt + AI editing workflows; scaled a cross-platform brand to 185k+ followers across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram and 200M+ organic views.

PeerSupport logo with two abstract figures embracing

PeerSupport

  • Web Dev
  • Safety Systems
  • Leadership

Led a 10-person team to build an anonymous peer-support chat app for college students (Django, React, Redis, Docker). Architected real-time safety workflows that combine user flagging with ML-based detection of at-risk messages for counselor review; won RPI’s “Change the World Challenge” (Spring 2020).

Code Startup Pitch
Driver at a steering wheel monitored by a dashboard-mounted camera and control box

SAFEWheel

  • Circuitry
  • Computer Vision

Built a computer-vision hardware system (Raspberry Pi + Google Cloud Vision) to detect distracted driving via hand position and eye closure; featured in Google’s internal newsletter.

Code Demo
Packed auditorium of students on laptops facing a HackRPI opening slide

HackRPI

  • Leadership
  • Event Organizing

Helped revive RPI's annual hackathon in 2019 after a year-long hiatus, then led its 8-person executive board as President, securing $25k+ in sponsorships (IBM, Bloomberg, and others) and drawing 400+ students from across the country.

Website Recap Press

Honors, Teaching & Service

Education

Ph.D. Computer Science

September 2022 - December 2025
Northeastern University
Advisor: Dr. Timothy Bickmore

B.S. Computer & Systems Engineering

September 2016 - May 2020
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Concentration: Artificial Intelligence & Data
Advisors: Dr. Hui Su, Dr. Joe H. Chow, Dr. Alhussein Abouzeid

Skills & Competencies

Leadership & Collaboration

Technical Strategy, Project Management, Teaching/Mentoring, Customer-First Mindset, Cross-Functional Teamwork, Stakeholder Alignment, Communication, Partnership Building, Product-Research Alignment, Agile

Languages

Python, Java, PHP, C/C#/C++, Kotlin, R, TypeScript, JavaScript, SQL

AI & Conversation Agents

LLM Agents (GPT-5, Gemini), RAG, LangChain, Multi-Agent Systems, Prompt & Context Engineering, RLHF / RLAIF, Test-Time Compute, Conversational/Embodied AI, AI Alignment & Risk Assessment, Simulated Users, Cognitive Architectures

Machine Learning & Data Science

PyTorch, Hugging Face, Transformers, TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, XGBoost, Gensim, NumPy, SciPy, Pandas, NLTK, Matplotlib, Google Vertex AI

Big Data & Cloud

Google Cloud (BigQuery, BigTable, Pub/Sub), Apache Spark, Hadoop, Hive, MapReduce, Kafka, ZooKeeper, Akka, Storm

Data Pipelines & DevOps

PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Aerospike, MS SQL Server, PowerMTA, SparkSQL, Airflow, Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Buildkite, Git, Datadog, Grafana, Kibana, PagerDuty, Microservices

Full-Stack & Tools

Django, React, FastAPI, Swagger, Servlet, MVC, Spring Boot, Maven, Guice, JUnit, Mockito, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, IntelliJ, PyCharm, Jupyter Notebook

Interdisciplinary & Creative

Psychology, Cognitive Science, Personal Health Informatics, Furhat Robotics, Google Veo 3, Unity Engine, Unreal Engine 5

Let's Connect

I'm always happy to talk about AI safety, mental health technology, and research collaborations. Grab a time for a virtual coffee chat, or reach out on LinkedIn or X.

Schedule a coffee chat