Ronald W. Schafer (born February 17, 1938) is an electrical engineer notable for his contributions to digital signal processing. After receiving his Ph.D. degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968, he joined the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Laboratories, where he did research on digital signal processing and digital speech coding. In 1974 he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he became a professor in electrical engineering, until leaving to join Hewlett Packard in March 2005.