He believes that research is more than just an academic path. For him, it is a way of life, “a calling or trying to understand how things work” that begins much earlier than high school. His earliest memories go back to when he was a toddler watching a TV programme about great figures in human history.
He still remembers the episode about Galileo Galilei and the experiment he performed on the Tower of Pisa which showed that gravity causes objects of different masses to fall with the same acceleration, as well as the episode about Archimedes. As he recalls, “I felt a kind of awakening about what I wanted to do with my life.”
Under Dr. Rosselló’s profile on ResearchGate is the quote “Opportunity is caught only by those who pursue it.” In light of this interesting thought, Dr. Rosselló reveals in the interview what kind of person one should be to be a researcher, answering the intriguing question of the importance of being curious, intelligent and knowing what one is striving for.
“Curiosity is the most important quality to have in order to do research,” he says, because as a researcher you want to question everything. Dedication to the work is also extremely important. Here he identifies with the thought of Pablo Picasso: “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”
“Every time I was doing some extra hours or working on a weekend, I found something,” Dr. Rosselló explains, “I found some inspiration or I made some contribution, I would say. For me, this is the proof that you really need to work hard, especially if you are trying to do something that nobody has done in the history of humankind, which is the main goal that any researcher would have.”
In addition to his personal view of science and research, Dr. Rosselló also introduces his family, originally from Sicily. His grandparents moved from the warm Mediterranean to Argentina, where he grew up and earned a doctorate in physics. His desire for better research opportunities then led him to Europe, first to Germany and then to Ljubljana.
The NASCAP project in which he is participating is about nanobubbles – bubbles that are very small, because a nanometre is a million times smaller than a millimetre. These tiny gas bubbles are making big waves in a variety of fields, from water treatment to biomedical engineering. However, the ability of nanobubbles to remain stable in an aqueous solution for long periods of time remains a mystery.
It’s a controversial topic, explains Dr. Juan Manuel Rosselló. Usually, the topics selected by European Union agencies explore the frontiers of knowledge, but in this case it’s a topic that many people still believe does not exist. As he puts it: “My project is about first demonstrating that these bubbles actually exist, and if they exist, trying to find a way to make them stable. So, basically, I want to produce, in a liquid, millions of very small bubbles that stay there for days or weeks.”
Buena suerte! Good luck!