In 1994, Dunne was appointed as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Manchester (
UMIST), before being appointed a Research Fellowship at
Hertford College, Oxford and the
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford from 1996 until 2012. He became the deputy head of the department but moved to
Imperial College London in 2012. He is an Emeritus Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. While in Oxford, Dunne was part of the Materials for fusion & fission power program. He led the
Micro-mechanical modelling techniques for forming texture, non-proportionality and failure in auto materials program at the
Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford between October 2011 and June 2012, when he moved the grant with him to the
Department of Materials, Imperial College London from June 2012 until it ended in March 2015. He also led the
Heterogeneous Mechanics in Hexagonal Alloys across Length and Time Scales (HexMat) program, which was
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded at a value of £5 million between May 2013 and November 2018. Dunne was the director of the Rolls-Royce Nuclear University Technology Centre at
Imperial College London. He is part of a £7.2 million program on
Mechanistic understanding of Irradiation Damage in fuel Assemblies (MIDAS) that is funded by
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council until April 2024. As of November 2022, Dunne is a professor of
Materials Science at
Imperial College London and holds the Chair in Micromechanics and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng)/Rolls-Royce Research Chair. He is also a
Rolls-Royce consultant, and an honorary professor and co-director of the Beijing International Aeronautical Materials (BIAM). discrete dislocation plasticity, and microstructure-sensitive nucleation and growth of short fatigue cracks in engineering materials, mainly
Nickel,
Titanium, and
Zirconium alloys. == Awards and honours ==