Eric Ross, Ph.D.

Professor of Chemistry

Dr. Eric Ross

Contact Information

Education & Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Arizona

B.S., Chemistry, University of Kansas

Courses Taught

CHEM 101: General Chemistry

CHEM 310: Quantitative Chemical Analysis

CHEM 340: Unified Laboratory I

CHEM 410: Instrumental Analysis

CHEM 471: Chem Bibliography


Ross, E.E.; Hoag, Christian; Pfeifer, Zach; Lundeen, Christopher; Owens, Sarah. “Metal ion binding to phospholipid bilayers evaluated by microaffinity chromatography,” Journal of Chromatography A 2016, 1451, 75-82.

Ross, E.E.; Mok, S.-W.; Bugni, S.R. “Assembly of lipid bilayers on silica and modified silica colloids by reconstitution of dried lipid films” Langmuir 2011, 27, 8634-8644.

D’Ambruoso, G.D.; Ross, E.E.; Armstrong, N.R.; McGrath, D.V. “Site-isolated, intermolecularly photocrosslinkable and patternable dendritic quinacridones," Chem. Commun. 2009, 3222-3224.

Ross, E.E.; Wirth, M.J. “Silica colloidal crystals as three dimensional scaffolds for supported lipid films” Langmuir 2008, 24, 1629-1634.

Ross, Eric E.; Joubert, James R.; Wysocki, Ronald J., Jr.; Nebesny, Ken; Spratt, Tony; O'Brien, David F.; Saavedra, S. Scott. Patterned Protein Films on Poly(lipid) Bilayers by Microcontact Printing. Biomacromolecules 2006, 7(5), 1393-1398

Ross, Eric E.; Mansfield, Elisabeth; Huang, Yiding; Aspinwall, Craig A. In Situ Fabrication of Three-Dimensional Chemical Patterns in Fused Silica Separation Capillaries with Polymerized Phospholipids. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2005, 127(48), 16756-16757

Zheng, Suping; Ross, Eric; Legg, Michael A.; Wirth, Mary J. High-speed electroseparations inside silica colloidal crystals. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2006, 128(28), 9016-9017

Dr. Ross is working on a multi-disciplinary, multi-University collaborative project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to evaluate the impacts of wildfire activity on municipal water quality.  Increases in many regulated and unregulated hazardous substances have been found in drinking water that has been treated from wildfire impacted areas.  Some of these substances may arise as byproducts of the disinfection process from the presence of increased organic carbon from the wildfire, some may leach directly into the source water through burned areas.  Dr. Ross is leading analytical chemistry work identifying and quantifying a number of substances, many of which are regulated at the part-per-billion level, in field and lab-generated samples of soil and water.  Examples include haloacetic acids, trihalomethanes, cyanotoxins, and a number of volatile organics. Projects involve selection and development of methodologies in gas and liquid chromatography that will meet the project’s demands for throughput, detection limits, and quality control.  In some cases, adaptation of EPA methods may be suitable for the project and they provide an outline of the rigorous procedures needed to validate to analysis. 

Additional projects in the Ross group are focused on measurements of affinity at lipid membranes using chromatography, with the aim of benefitting and improving various facets of analyses for certain types of interactions, membranes, or experimental conditions. For example, chromatography is naturally adept at measuring low affinity interactions which are difficult to measure by most other techniques. Existing chromatographic materials do not support lipid structures without imparting unwanted structural effects that can dramatically influence the interaction under study.  Dr. Ross’s research background in surface studies and thin films is driving the development and characterization of new particulate supports for dynamic lipid bilayers that have several improved properties for chromatography over existing membrane mimetic materials.  The current focus is on the evaluation of metal ion binding to lipids and membrane ionophores which affect many membrane properties and/or processes occurring at them but can only be probed by a limited number of methods under restricted conditions. The work has been supported by research grants from Research Corporation and the National Science Foundation.