Dr. Stephen Ross is the Associate Director of the NYU Langone Center for Psychedelic Medicine, and the Director of the NYU Psychedelic Medicine Research Training Program. He is a Research Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and a founding member of the NYU Psychedelic Research Group, which preceded the establishment of the CPM. His primary research interests include the treatment of addiction, the interface between pain and addiction, and the development of novel interventions for treating personality disorders and psychological distress in patients with life-threatening illnesses.
Dr Ross has been the Principal Investigator (PI) on several recent and ongoing trials of psychedelic-assisted therapy at NYU. He led a groundbreaking trials of psilocybin-assisted therapy for anxiety and existential distress in patients with life-threatening cancer, and is now following up those findings with a large, multisite, randomized controlled trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. He was the site PI in a Phase 2, multisite trial of psilocybin treatment for major depressive disorder, and led a study investigating the effects of psilocybin on religious professionals. Dr. Ross is an expert in cannabinoid therapeutics, is the Principal Investigator on a NIDA funded study of CBD administration in patients with chronic radicular pain on chronic opioid therapy. He has also been a co-PI and study therapist on trials of psilocybin-assisted therapy for alcohol use disorder and MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD.
Over his long career at NYU Langone and its affiliate, Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Ross has been involved in a variety of leadership roles in administration, teaching and research. A renowned leader in Addiction Psychiatry, Dr. Ross was the Director of Addiction Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, and the Director of the Division of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse at Bellevue Hospital, Director of the Bellevue Opioid Overdose Prevention Program and the Inpatient Dual Diagnosis Training Unit. He is recognized for his expertise in clinical education, having received institutional and national teaching awards over the last 20 years. Beyond his clinical research, he brings his teaching experience to his work at the CPM through his involvement in a tri-institutional curriculum development project that is tasked with generating materials to prepare the next generation of physicians for the coming age of psychedelic medicine.