In 1993 Thomas J. Mason joined the graduate faculty at the College of Public Health, University of South Florida ( USF ). He served as the Chairperson of Epidemiology and Biostatistics for six years, and has served as the Director of the Global Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Action since 2000. He holds Joint Professorships in the Medical Ethics and Humanities and Global Emergency Medical Sciences in the Department of Internal Medicine, USF College of Medicine. Tom has been actively engaged in 'global activities' which range from serving on a Scientific Advisory Committee to the Ministry for the Environment, Nature and Forests, State of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany to serving for eleven years as the Co-Director of the PAHO Summer Program in Intermediate Epidemiology. He has stated that he wants to excite the same passion he has for the 'public's health' in the next generation of public health practitioners before he retires. However, he is quick to share that he will never 'retire/ retire'. Tom is married to Anya Shevchenko. He worked with Anya at the National Cancer Institute. Their team published the first Atlas of United States Cancer Mortality at the county level in 1975. This started a global trend in utilizing Geographic Information Systems to identify areas where additional epidemiologic studies were likely to identify local determinants of disease. Anya went on to pursue her graduate work in Anthropology both in Physical Anthropology and Primatology at George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania. Over the years, since they married in 1974, Anya has expanded his interests/ activities to include birding, wildlife photography, reading mystery novels and, most recently, has introduced him to ballroom dancing!!
