Mike West earned a BSc in Mathematics in 1978 and a PhD in Mathematics (Statistics) in 1982 from the University of Nottingham. He worked at Warwick University before joining Duke University in 1988, where he served as the Director of the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences (ISDS) from 1990 to 2001.

As an English and American statistician, Mike's primary focus is on Bayesian statistics. His research contributions span theory and application in various fields, including finance, commerce, macroeconomics, climatology, engineering, genomics, and other areas of biology. His current core research and development activities include Bayesian statistics and decision analysis in causal inference, dynamic modeling, forecasting and time series analysis, dynamic networks, model uncertainty, and simulation and optimization. Since 1999, he has held the position of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University.