Ross is an advocate for the social, political and economic value of radio astronomy. His research focuses use on articulating the capabilities of simple observational facilities to conduct research into short-lived astronomical phenomena in the Universe. He leads the Maser Monitoring Organisation which is a collaboration of radio observatories and astronomers seeking to detect and understand these transient events. In addition he focuses on conducting high-resolution investigations of these unusual events using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) which is an observing method that involves shared risk and shared rewards for all participating countries regardless of the political landscape.