He served as the chairman of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at North Dakota State University from 1977 to 1985.
[1] In 1987, Shapiro joined Portland State University as a professor of computer science, where he also served as department chair from 1987 to 1994.
[1] One of his most cited works is "Implementation techniques for main memory database systems" (1984), co-authored with David J. DeWitt and others, which explored the changes necessary for relational database systems to take advantage of large amounts of main memory.
[4] In 2002-2003, Shapiro was elected by students as Outstanding Computer Science Teacher at Portland State University.
[5] Shapiro is active in community service, having served on the Board of Directors for Our House of Portland, as Vice President of Hospice of Washington County, and as a volunteer consultant for Tri-Met on the use of computers and the web for bus on-time information.