Steven L. West

Who is Steven L. West?

Steven L. West, Ph.D. is an American research scientist and rehabilitation counselor specializing in addictions issues among persons with disabilities. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA, and is Associate Director of the VCU Center for Rehabilitation Science and Engineering. CERSE is an interdisciplinary research consortium crossing four schools at VCU that has some $16 million per year in external funding including research on which he is principal investigator. He also leads the Defense and Veterans research node within CERSE.

He trained as a rehabilitation counselor at the University of Tennessee before completing his doctoral studies at Texas Tech University.

Active in the fields of addiction science, rehabilitation, and public health, he was awarded the Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Addiction Medicine in 2005. An advocate for persons with disabilities, he served for many years as a member of the Virginia Department of Rehabilitative Services' Human Research Review Committee

He resides with his wife and two sons in Richmond, VA.