His thesis research at MIT focused on the the applications of systems engineering methods to understanding selective nanoscale carbon nanotube devices and sensors under the supervision of Michael S. Strano and Richard Braatz. Ulissi was then a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford with Jens K. Nørskov where he worked on machine learning techniques to simplify complex catalyst reaction networks, applied to the electrochemical reduction of N2 and CO2 to fuels.