Prof. Kulmala has been a pioneer of hot electron electrochemistry and its analytical applications over 30 years. These methods fit very well in the world of Point-of-Need (PoN) and Point-of-Care (PoC) analysis, such as, in immunoassays and other types of bioaffinity assays.

Most of the research has been carried out applying thin insulating film-coated electrodes, such as, aluminum or magnesium metals or a strongly doped degenerate semiconductor coated with ultrathin oxide films of the form Conductor/Insulating film. Lately, his group have been developing printable low-cost electrodes for the same purposes. This has been successful by making organic polymer -based inks that are doped with suitable conductor particles. Some of the developed composite electrodes, e.g. polystyrene-carbon black film on metals, have been already shown to be applicable in real-world bioaffinity assays. The strength of these new developments is the greater tolerance of the thickness and composition variance of the films which makes the new composite electrodes more attractive than the electrode materials utilized previously.

Prof. Kulmala has 10 granted US patents in this field and patents also in other countries within the same patent families in addition to scientific papers.  Prof. Kulmala has been also interested in luminescence methods in general and written review papers on luminescence.