Dr. Vitolo's academic work focused on optimizing physical and financial systems through quantitative analysis, linear programming, and other methods. While pursuing his doctorate at Boston University, Dr. Vitolo was a member of the university's energy club, researched and presented an aggregation of state renewable portfolio standards, and was part of a team which performed an energy audit of the university's campus.

Before joining Synapse, Dr. Vitolo was a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory where he designed algorithms and implemented software to create topologies for aerial, land-based, and nautical vehicles. He also served as a systems engineering intern for a pharmaceutical distributor. Dr. Vitolo holds a PhD in systems engineering from Boston University, an MS in financial and industrial mathematics from Dublin City University, Ireland, and bachelor's degrees in applied mathematics, computer science, and economics from North Carolina State University.