Ricardo Antonio Olea (Spanish pronunciation: [riˈkaɾðo anˈtonjo oˈlea]) is a Chilean American who was a research mathematical statistician with the United States Geological Survey (2006–21).

Previously, he spent most of his career with the National Oil Company of Chile (ENAP) in Punta Arenas and Santiago, and with the Kansas Geological Survey in Lawrence.

He received the William Christian Krumbein Medal in 2004 from the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences.

[1] He served as Secretary-General (1992−1996) and President (1996–2000) for the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences;[2] and Secretary General (2019–21) of the Compositional Data Association.

[3] He has been active in geostatistics since the early 1970s,[4] with briefer involvements in various other forms of quantitative modeling, including geophysics,[5] petrophysics,[6] reservoir engineering,[7] energy resources assessment,[8] compositional data analysis,[9] lithostratigraphy,[10] statistics,[11] enhanced oil recovery,[12] coastal processes,[13] economic analysis,[14] coal mining,[15] geohydrology,[16] marine geology,[17] epidemiology[18] ichnology[19] and chemometrics.