Tom Truscott is an American computer scientist best known for creating Usenet with Jim Ellis, when both were graduate students at Duke University. He is also a member of ACM, IEEE, and Sigma Xi. One of his first endeavors into computers was writing a computer chess program and then later working on a global optimizer for C at Bell Labs. This computer chess program competed in multiple computer chess tournaments such as the Toronto chess tournament in 1977 (2nd place) and the Linz tournament in 1980 (3rd place). Today, Truscott works on tools that analyze software as a software developer for the SAS Institute. Truscott received the Usenix Life Time Achievement Award for Usenet.