Dr. James Dunn obtained his B.S. degree in Biology and Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He trained in General Surgery at the UCLA School of Medicine and in Pediatric Surgery at the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. He was the Professor and Chief of Pediatric Surgery at UCLA, with a joint appointment in the Department of Bioengineering until 2016. Dr. Dunn served as the Susan B. Ford Surgeon-in-Chief at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital from 2016 to 2022. He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Director of Pediatric Surgery, and Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Dr. Dunn's research interests include intestinal lengthening for short bowel syndrome, intestinal stem cell therapy for intestinal failure, skin derived precursor cell therapy for enteric neuromuscular dysfunction, and intestinal tissue engineering.