“It takes a village to nurture a start-up”
Translating excellent research into real innovation
Creating real impact by translating excellent research into innovation is what Rosaria Cercola is really passionate about. As Venture Manager at the TUM Venture Lab Quantum / Semicon she supports start-ups in the Munich Quantum Valley ecosystem along this process.
By Veronika Früh
When Rosaria Cercola chose to focus on physical chemistry for her Ph.D., she had one priority: no extensive lab work required. “I had never been in a lab before I went to university. If I had, I maybe would not have studied chemistry in the first place,” she recalls with a laugh. “I think it comes down to you either are someone that is good at paying attention to details and being extra careful or you’re not. And I’m really not – I bump into things, I forget stuff and in a chemistry lab, you have to know exactly what you’re doing, what you’re mixing and you have to be very precise. For me, that was always a little bit more challenging than it should have been.” But the fascination for how you could understand and somehow manipulate matter, that was always there. During high school, Rosaria was introduced to a broad spectrum of scientific topics and liked most of them. Chemistry however was something she was especially excited about and good at, so it felt natural for her to follow that path.
After completing her bachelor and master degree in chemistry at the University of Naples, Rosaria decided to leave Italy to pursue her Ph.D. in York, England and fulfill her long-held dream of living in the UK. “I have been to London for the first time when I was 17 and I fell in love and really, really, really wanted to go back,” she tells. “Of course, York is not London, but the Ph.D. project there was really cool, that is why I moved there.” In her project, the chemist did gas-phase spectroscopy of molecular ions – basically hitting trapped ions with a laser at different wavelengths, as she explains, studying photochemical pathways. In her experimental setup she could follow the ions as they fragmented, analyze fragmentation patterns and realize where weaker bonds are located. Exploring how things work at this tiny scale, how precise everything functions, is what Rosaria found incredible fascinating.
Apart from doing cool research, moving to York also meant dealing with a new culture, both inside and outside of academia, which was a challenge and a joy at the same time for the scientist. “At first, it was a shock to me, coming from the south of Italy,” Rosaria recalls. “I had to learn to talk to people without scaring them away. Personally, I am loud, I am huggy, I like to be in close contact and that is not something that may be that appreciated there.” But after some months, everything ran smoothly. What she really appreciated was the very inclusive, supportive academic culture that she got to experience, with an amazing supervisor, that helped her along the way. So, for Rosaria, doing her Ph.D. was not only about doing research, but even more about getting to know herself better, growing as a person and finding her own way. “I had the psychological safety to say, maybe this is not my path, but I do have time and I do have support to explore more things,” she says, demonstrating her open personality. “I learned that for me, research was too much of a solitary work. I prefer being more in touch with people, working more directly with people.”
Looking how to create the most impact
This ambivalence of having a deep fascination for scientific topics and not wanting to be directly involved in research shaped much of Rosaria’s further work. After reaching her doctorate, she first worked as a freelance science writer. Following her partner to Austin, Texas – “you know the two-body-problem, right…” – she had the chance to experiment with this type of work and rediscovered her joy of writing. “Somehow, sometime in university, I decided that I was the scientist and I put myself in a little box,” Rosaria explains. Being creative and enjoying writing did not fit that box at the time and it took her a while to break free of that image of herself. As a writer, she translated complex matters into formats that are more accessible to a wide variety of audiences in an effort to close the gap she perceived between research and a general public. “What I didn’t like about academia is how it’s closed off in its ivory tower and this gap should be addressed,” she says. That is why science outreach activities have always been close to her heart and she later became an editorial assistant for “Science in School”, a journal for science teachers. “What I especially loved about the outreach activities that we were doing with kids was to see that spark again,” she says. “When you are a kid, you are always a scientist. You are always learning about new stuff and in doing so, basically applying the scientific method. You try something, it doesn’t work. You try again and if it doesn’t work the tenth time, you change the way you do it until you find out how it works. It’s super natural.” Making science fun is what needs to be done in Rosaria’s opinion to get more people into research.
Rosaria Cercola, 36
Position
Venture Manager
Institute
TUM Venture Lab Quantum / Semicon
Degree
Chemistry
As a venture manager, Rosaria supports founders and start-ups in bringing their ideas from academic research into industrial applications and navigating the world of entrepreneurship. She is particularly passionate about connecting with a wide variety of people and building networks and communities.
Getting many people excited about science and research is important, but for Rosaria, there was still one essential aspect missing – how academic results translate into innovation to have a real impact. “At this point, I had been following this movement, it is called 80.000 hours,” she recalls. “It is the number that we give to the amount of hours that we work in our life. And if you think about it, it is so much. We probably only sleep more than that. The movement suggests, that you do the things that create the most impact for you. That you find your cause and try to work on it.” So, she was looking to move into a role where she could have that impact. For her, that lies mostly in innovation and start-ups. By becoming a part of the TUM Venture Lab Quantum / Semicon (VLQS), Munich’s innovation center for quantum technologies that is part of MQV, she stepped into this world of entrepreneurship. “The core of my job is helping to understand start-ups what their needs are, trying to remove some of the blockers that they have, and supporting them in moving to the next step,” she explains.
Munich is, in Rosarias opinion as a VLQS Venture Manager, a very good place for tech start-ups. “There is great research being done here. And not just currently, but in the past 30, 50, 60 years there has been,” she says and emphasizes the importance of having this basis to build upon. “There is venture capital around and the ministries are also very interested in all of this,” she continues. “But I think the key in Munich is having all of the industry, this is not something that is everywhere.” Connecting founders or young start-ups with an industry network builds their business expertise and helps them grow. And, most importantly, makes sure the excellent research translates into solutions to a real problem. “People usually start innovation from a problem perspective. But in this case, you have to start from a solution perspective”, explains Rosaria. “This is quite hard and it is something, that we support the scientists with at the Venture Lab.” For Rosaria, founding a successful start-up comes down the ecosystem – beside Munich's excellent research foundations and technologies, mentors and experts, someone who has built products before as well as co-founders that bring in an economics background are as important as the money and venture capitalists that see and trust the potential. “Like we always say, it takes a village to nurture a start-up,” she sums it up. “And now we have a a fair share of start-ups being born out of Munich Quantum Valley and the Munich quantum research ecosystem.”
Creating community
What Rosaria now enjoys most about her work as a Venture Manager is the thing she was missing in academia: “Definitely the human connection! I love talking to people, getting to know all of these very cool scientists as it takes some courage for them to actually make the jump from pure academia to entrepreneurship.” Seeing the teams she supports move forward with their roadmap, have a break-trough in the lab, get a product out or get some funding makes her especially proud. “It’s really weird, because they do all the work, but somehow I feel really proud of them,” she says. Maybe it is because she remembers how steep the learning curve was – and still is – from when she herself first stepped into the world of entrepreneurship and business, which sometimes felt like having to learn a whole new language. “Honestly, this was a topic that was absolutely unknown to me not that long ago,” she says. Being tasked with the organization of entrepreneurial education and outreach activities when she first started working at VLQS also helped Rosaria ease into this new world. She still felt she had a gap in her knowledge and decided to do an Executive Master of Business Administration at the POLIMI Graduate School of Management besides her work. It complements her scientific background in chemistry and physics with the technological and economical perspectives. Classes every week, group assignments, homework – even though much of program is remote and asynchronous, as it is designed to go along a full-time job, it still requires a lot of time. Even more than Rosaria assumed. But she loves the challenge and also being a student again: “It is a really different experience than studying chemistry,” she says. “It’s a really cool one.”
As if that wasn’t enough – “who needs sleep anyways, right?” – Rosaria founded UniConNet, an Italian platform to help students coming out of university find their way in the corporate world. “In Italy, students don’t have the experience of all the student work like they do here,” she explains. “No one told them how to write a CV, what to look for in a job, what careers are available.” Also recalling her own need of mentorship in this time, Rosaria is building this support network – to make it easier for all of those who follow.
It all comes back to her love of working with people and creating community. “We’ve been around for five years and are around 20 people, all volunteers,” she tells. “And I think that’s really powerful when you have this sort of commitment from people to help other people.” The context of UniConNet might differ from her work at VLQS, but both combine a motto, that is very close to Rosaria’s heart: “We lift as we climb, you know?”
Published 30 September 2026; Interview 4 July 2026