A feedback mechanism is one such example - in which the body, depending on feedback about energy needs, decides to either break down sugars or to store them as reserve. The physical chemist's contributions include the experiment-based as well as theoretical, however. For example, his team measured and determined the connections between 12 chemical species in a part of the glycolysis, the process the body uses to break down sugars to ultimately yield energy. The analysis, which previously would have taken years of research, took Ross's laboratory four months. Another application for his approach is the characterization of genes, called genomics, and of their protein products, called proteomics.
Speed is the advantage.
Ross, whose immediate family escaped Austria in 1939, received his undergraduate degree from Queens College in 1948 and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. He is a member of the ACS divisions of physical and theoretical chemistry.