Though he graduated in 1963, Marshall Rafal, energetic and affable, can easily reel off data about his undergraduate cohort in chemical engineering at The Cooper Union: 17 members who made it to graduation, all men and nearly all the sons of immigrants, eight of whom went on to earn master’s degrees and the other nine earned Ph.D.’s. “Most jobs were in extractive fields like chemicals and big oil,” he recalls, and those were exactly the fields he and his colleagues entered following their graduate studies.

His description of that cohort is in many ways autobiographical: Rafal, whose father and grandparents arrived in Brooklyn in the 1920s, earned his doctorate at Northwestern University just three years after graduating from Cooper. He started his career at Esso, working in their Math and Systems company where he mined computer skills gleaned initially at The Cooper Union thanks to Professor Bob Steinberger’s procurement of an IBM 1620, the first digital computer at Cooper. In retrospect, Rafal sees the machine as “a glorified abacus” but one that got him the programming skills that would become so crucial in his career. At Esso, his knowledge of FORTRAN code let him turn engineers’ equations into digital simulations of real-world chemical engineering plant systems.

But with a grandfather who opened a shoe store on Avenue U in Brooklyn and a father who started his own tool and die company in lower Manhattan, Rafal, who is currently a Cooper trustee, wanted his own business. During a recent interview, he laughed: “I was born with a very powerful gene of entrepreneurship.”

In August 1971, he founded OLI Systems, a company that would support chemical and oil concerns using computer simulation models. He supported his young family by driving a cab and writing code in his spare time. Rafal needed to test his work on a computer, but in those days of huge mainframes, purchasing one was out of the question despite a generous gift from his father. “I was one day short of my 30th birthday when a salesman at a computer time sharing company got in touch.” The company was NCSS, and the salesman was offering Rafal a chance to use their IBM 360 Mainframe—but only during the company’s off hours, 6 in the evening until 1 in the morning. NCSS, based in Stamford, Connecticut, had a prominent office in Midtown Manhattan where Rafal was given access to terminals connected to the mainframe computer in Stamford. Those months lay the framework for Rafal’s business, which proved to be a pioneer in understanding the role of electrolytes in industrial processes.

As the business expanded, he grew increasingly concerned about potential environmental damage caused by poorly run plants as well as disposal of chemicals into natural environments, so he focused on simulating chemical plant processes as well as in situ disposal of hazardous chemicals, first in order to mitigate the impact of contaminants on the environment and later in order to avoid corrosion, a major factor in the cause of hazardous leaks and equipment failure. Rafal’s early applications of computing to chemical engineering earned him the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) CAST Award for lifetime achievement in computing practice in 2002.

In many ways, Rafal’s current engagement with The Cooper Union is through the sustainability lens that’s also informed his business. When he and chemical engineering professor Amanda Simson met eight years ago, Professor Simson invited Rafal to provide an annual lecture in her Advanced Thermodynamics course.  Four years ago, after the last of these lectures, they discovered a shared passion for literature about climate change. Ultimately, they merged their reading groups dedicated to the subject. Simson then suggested that Rafal form an alumni affinity group related to climate change, so he, along with Lynn Lander, a 1960 chemical engineering graduate, did just that, founding The Cooper Union Climate Initiative (CUCI). Their goal is to encourage Cooper students from all three schools to enter professional fields dedicated to slowing climate change while mitigating its present impact on communities around the world, a stark contrast from a career in the extractive industries so prominent in the lives of Cooper graduates back in 1963.

Now in its 54th year, OLI is now run by one of Rafal’s sons, Andy, with Rafal getting to spend more time pursuing his work at Cooper (Rafal was elected to a four-year term as an Alumni Trustee of the Board of Cooper in 2023) as well as a passion for the arts, especially ballet and theater. Andy and his older brother Alex had retired from investment banking in their 30s and decided they’d help their father sell his business. But they soon discovered their own entrepreneurial bent, and instead of selling, Andy became CEO and Alex a trusted advisor. They then dramatically expanded the business: in only seven and a half years, they’ve gone from 20 to 80 employees. Today, the company gives their clients real-time information to guide decisions related to productivity, efficiency, and sustainability.

Not only have Andy and Alex taken on the family business, they, along with one of their sisters, have become active donors to Cooper. In 2017, Rafal met with former president Laura Sparks to learn of the ten-year mission being launched to restore free tuition to the school, and his daughter, Dr. Julia Rafal-Baer, joined him. A prominent education advisor who founded Women Leading Ed, she rightly views Cooper as part of her own history as well as her father’s and has since set up a Donor Advised Fund for her father’s alma mater. With their dad, Julia, Andrew, and Alex help fund The Rafal Student Scholarship Fund for a chemical engineering student, the Annual Fund, and select engineering fund drives, including a thermodynamics prize for a chemical engineering student.

And even more of Rafal's family is joining what he calls “the circle of donors to Cooper.” He is attending this year’s Lifetime Giving Societies Dinner (Rafal is a member of the Sarah Amelia Hewitt Society), with daughter Mindy, who is a valued consultant to pharmaceutical companies working in the areas of clinical trials, medical affairs, and medical education for physicians. She too is a generous donor to The Cooper Union. Earlier this year, he brought family, including Alex, Andy, their spouses, and two grandchildren, a 15-year-old granddaughter and a 14-year-old grandson, to a Cooper event, a talk between Justice Stephen Breyer and Preet Bharara. “They loved it!” The Rafal enthusiasm for Cooper may easily extend to a third generation.