Dr. Walter R. Benson has a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (1958). He completed post doctorate research at Purdue University (1959), and worked as an Assistant Professor of chemistry at Colorado State University (1959-1963). He worked at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1963 - 1986, the last 10 years as Director, Division of Drug Chemistry. He also established a World Health Organization (WHO) drug testing laboratory for 16 African countries in Zimbabwe (1987-1990). `

Dr. Benson currently serves as the project leader (1992-present) for the International Organization for Chemical Sciences in Development (IOCD / IUPAC) helping chemists in developing nations to improve their analytical laboratories, QA/QC, and analytical capabilities. In previous positions he has worked as a US Army pharmacist (1951-53), an industrial chemist (1953-55), a Scientific Advisor to the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC, 2002-2003), a consultant for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agriculture Service (USDA/FAS) to Panama (2006) and for IOCD as group leader to Uganda National Bureau of Standards and 7 other labs (2005).

Dr. Benson received the FDA Award of Merit for training government scientists in regulatory pesticide chemistry and research in pesticide and drug regulatory analysis. His work has included analysis of optical isomers of drugs. He has published 65 research papers.