James Kinross is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Imperial College London, and he is head of colorectal surgery at Imperial NHS trust. He is also a visiting Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. He was an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Surgery and an Ethicon Laparoscopic Fellow in Colorectal Surgery. He was awarded a Royal College of Surgeons of England training fellowship during his PhD on the gut microbiome and he was funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences as an early stage lecturer. His research group studies how the gut microbiome causes chronic diseases of the gut such as cancer, and how gut bacteria may be engineered to treat cancer. James is currently supervising 7 PhD candidates, and he has published over 200 peer reviewed papers, and he regularly presents his work internationally. He has worked in broadcasting (BBC 1: The truth about takeaways, and Trust me I am a doctor) and writes for media outlets on many different clinical topics in healthcare. His first book Dark Matter: The new science of the microbiome was published by Penguin in 2023.