You’ve seen it many times in pizza commercials: An unseen hand uses a spatula to lift a slice. The cheese, hot and stringy, becomes long and elastic as it resists the pull from the pie.

…It is a primal human response to melt and stretch that attracts humans to pizza, says Professor Sundaram Gunasekaran.

A cheese expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gunasekaran has worked with the pizza industry to develop more efficient ways to measure that melt. There is a scientist for every art, and when it comes to the way cheese melts, “Dr. Guna” is your man.