He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Wake Forest University in 1999 with a B.S. degree in Chemistry and was elected into Phi Beta Kappa. Dr. Burns earned his medical degree from the Yale University School of Medicine in 2004 and was awarded a research training fellowship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He completed clinical residency training in general surgery at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2012, during which time he received awards for meritorious laboratory research and for education. Dr. Burns subsequently completed a clinical fellowship in complex general surgical oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2015, where he served as the Chief Administrative Fellow in his final year. He also has postgraduate research training in the field of cancer immunotherapy and tumor immunology at the National Cancer Institute and the MD Anderson Cancer Center.