Thomas C. Tucker, PhD, MPH, is a Professor and was the founding chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health. He is also the Senior Director for Cancer Surveillance at the Markey Cancer Center (MCC). He was the Associate Director for Cancer Control at the Markey Cancer Center and Director of the Kentucky Cancer Registry (KCR) for nearly 20 years. He is an internationally recognized population scientist with more than 45 years of experience in cancer surveillance and cancer control research. He has served as the Principal Investigator for the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) in Kentucky. Dr. Tucker served on the International Association of Cancer Registries (IACR) Board of Directors and he is currently a member of the Advisory Board for CONCORD-2, an international study of cancer survival in more than 67 countries. He is the past President of the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) and in 2001 he received NAACCR’s highest honor, the Calum Muir Award, for lifetime contributions to the science of cancer surveillance. His research is focused on disparities in the burden of lung, colorectal, breast and cervical cancer with an emphasis on rural and Appalachian populations, and on using the population-based cancer registry as a virtual tissue repository (VTR).