Mr. Shapp

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Mr. Shapp is one of the mentors for POBots, FIRST team 353. He mostly helps our Programming group, as he studied programming at Oneonta State University, as well as electrical engineering and math. In his professional career, he used both. He interned at "Burns and Roe," an Engineering company who built Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island. The plant was destroyed in a major nuclear accident now called "Three Mile Island." He went there during the summer after the accident and worked with the nuclear engineers that were analyzing the failure of the plant, learning everything he needed to know about nuclear power plants and the physics behind them. His first real job was at An LI company, a division of Gould Inc. named Simulating Systems. They made real-time simulators or flight simulators. This included the programming, electrical work, and many other pieces. It was built absolutely from the ground up, with visual systems, control systems, etc. In one project, he built the optics and screens for a projection system for a visual graphics system that needed to get the graphics engines to do a full motion graphic video for real-time simulators. He also worked with nuclear power plant simulators, where his experience from his internship at Three Mile Island helped a lot. After he left Gould, he headed towards Wall Street, where he did computer programming, and made computers do many things for Wall Street businesses, including getting live market data, presenting it, and analyzing it. It was a lot of programming, a lot of software. He also built large systems for Wall Street, with thousands of computers connected together. These systems moved market data, analyzed it, and had and/or created all the tools Wall Street traders and brokers need. He spent most of his career doing this, before going into a small business called AVTV Network, which is where he works now. It produces an entertainment service that is sent into doctors’ waiting rooms. They sell air time for advertisements. His job at the company is the chief technology officer. He produces all the technology necessary to send the entertainment service into the doctors’ waiting rooms. He started mentoring at POBots because his son was very interested and active in the club and eventually got Mr. Shapp active in the club. He eventually officially became part of the team. His son graduated in the class of 2007, and Mr. Shapp liked the club enough to decide to stay on and mentor.