Dr. Harris Jack Shapiro

I graduated near the top of the class at CCNY, and I did get a job with a company called Surface Combustion in Ohio. At that time, I got married and we both went to Toledo. The Korean War started and I got a job with Chase Aircraft in Trenton, New Jersey, and I became the senior equipment engineer on the C-123B. I was in school and I turned out to be a good engineer, so I left Chase. They were owned by Kaiser and they wanted to move over to Michigan. I had come out of Ohio and I wanted to stay on the East Coast. I went to work for a small French company in Greenwich, Connecticut, and I was there for a few years. I started my own company, Aerotest Laboratories, Inc. I had a pod, and I was a Navy pilot. We grew the company and became the first- or second-largest military environmental testing company in the United States, with branches in California, Mississippi, and New York. We were acquired by the Ogden Corporation, which was on the New York Stock Exchange. I became president of Optum Technology and I stayed with them for the length of my contract. That was over five years, and during that time, I went back to school and I got my master's in project engineering. I was really hooked. I went back and I got my PhD. I became a professor at Iona College for a year. I went back to Blue Oak, and I spent 25 years as chairman of the management and the executive in charge of the research lab.