Richard Coale Willson is an American chemical engineer, academic, and biotechnology entrepreneur. He is the Huffington–Woestemeyer Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry. Willson is also director of the University of Houston Drug Discovery Institute. Willson works on biomolecular recognition, bioseparations, and molecular diagnostics. He develops methods of detection and measurement technologies for applications in pharmaceutical manufacturing, process control, and medical diagnostics. Willson has been elected a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the National Academy of Inventors Wilson is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, and holds appointments in the Quantitative and Computational Biology program of Baylor College of Medicine and at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.