Dr. Sun is double board certified in neurosurgery and pediatric neurosurgery

Peter P. Sun MD, is a devoted and extraordinarily skilled pediatric neurosurgeon. He is committed to providing the highest quality care to his patients. He grew up in Taiwan and Los Angeles, speaks English and Mandarin Chinese, and values his bicultural heritage. Dr. Sun believes that “having another cultural background always adds more perspective.”

His father and other family members came from the business world, but Dr. Sun was determined to chart his own course. “I wanted to do something where there was value beyond money.”

As a child he was fascinated with the brain and nervous system. Later, as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, he studied psychobiology, received a bachelor’s degree and went on to medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. There, Dr. Sun discovered that the nervous system was “the most elegant in the body,” and realized that the surgical approach to “fix things” was the best fit for his skills and personality.  He decided to pursue neurosurgery, one of medicine’s most demanding subspecialties.

Dr. Sun did a surgical internship at the University of California, Davis and completed his neurosurgical residency at Yale University.  Dr. Sun then received special training at New York University, where he focused on spine surgery. Next, he did a fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Pediatric neurosurgery held a special attraction: “Neurosurgical conditions in kids tend to be curable…surgery on children has a lifetime impact.”

Before moving to the East Bay, Dr. Sun stayed on at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and was Assistant Professor in Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania, for four years. In 2000, Dr. Sun returned to California to become Chief of Neurosurgery at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland. Dr. Sun is listed in  "Best Doctors in America", Top Doctors in U. S. News and World Report and Top Surgeons by Consumer Research Council of America.

Dr. Jonathan Finley, MD, the pre-eminent neuro-oncologist in the world, said of Dr. Sun:

"He is perhaps the most skilled pediatric brain tumor surgeon with whom I have worked."

Besides being the Director of the Brain Tumor Program at Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Dr. Finley is a consultant at Children's Hospital Oakland.

Despite being the busiest surgeon at Children's Hospital, and spending over 1500 hours a year in the operating room, Dr. Sun has found time to author or co-author numerous  peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and lecture across the country. He’s also a Clinical Professor in Neurosurgery at the UCSF Department of Neurological Surgery, and a Pre-med Mentor at the University of California, Berkeley, and through the years he has developed special strengths that help him excel.

“I love what I do, so that allows me to be patient and determined. I don’t give up. Dissections can take a long time, but you can’t injure anything. Things always work out at the end.”