In an astounding, unprecedented short period of three years after graduation from Jarvis, Bill was awarded a PHD in Electrical Engineering at the University of Toronto.  He has been described as being ‘brilliant’ and called a ‘soaring genius’ although some people have also strangely used the words ‘fantastically delusional’.  (Oliver Bertin: “He always did have a vivid imagination!”)

Despite attractive offers in academia of chairs at MIT and CalTech, (Oliver Bertin: “umm!”) he opted for an ordinary life in industry.  He worked many years (too many) at Litton Systems, a defense contractor – He was an employee there in 1982 when a Litton building was bombed in protest to its role in making navigation components for cruise missiles.  For the last 18 years of his working life, he bounced from one company to another as a contract engineer doing electronic design.  Among the interesting companies, he worked at were:  Sciex – producer of mass spectrometers;  Optech – maker of laser imaging systems such as one for airborne terrain mapping; and, Visualsonics – maker of high-resolution ultrasound imaging equipment.  At these aforementioned companies, he almost single-handedly ….. well, he did mostly run-of-the-mill control and communication electronics without knowing much or any of the companies’ core technologies.

He has retired and lives a quiet life in Toronto with his wife Sonia.  Their daughters, Anne and Jane, and her family, live also in Toronto and help look after him in his frail old age. 

Harold Wright: “Bill Ngo is a friend of mine and has been for about 40 years as our kids went to the same day care and we reconnected there.  Bill and Sonia have two lovely daughters, Jane and Annie, who are in their early forties.  Bill is retired but worked as an electrical engineer designing sophisticated systems.”

Oliver Bertin: “Bill told me some vivid stories about his family’s life in China under the Japanese and the Communists before they escaped to Hong Kong and finally to Canada.”