María Rosa is a PhD candidate in Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics. Her research lies at the intersection of quantum information and quantum field theory in curved spacetime, using Unruh–DeWitt detectors.

She has explored what these detectors observe as they fall into a black hole and whether their response is special at the event horizon. Her broader interests include understanding which quantum resources beyond entanglement can be harvested from the vacuum, as well as studying the behavior of optical cavities placed in superpositions of distinct states, with potential applications to modeling superpositions of spacetime itself.

María Rosa collaborates with researchers in Sweden and the UK, and actively contributes to community building. She co-organizes conferences and is a co-founder of the Waterloo Relativistic Quantum Information Seminar Series.