After obtaining his Master''s and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics from Eindhoven University of Technology (cum laude), Draisma worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Basel during 2002-2005. He then returned to Eindhoven, first as an assistant professor and from 2011-2016 as an associate professor of Discrete and Applied Algebraic Geometry. In 2015-2016, Draisma was a part-time full professor at the VU Amsterdam. Since 2016, Draisma is a full professor of Mathematics at the University of Bern, as well as a part-time full professor of Applied Algebra and Geometry at TU/e.

Draisma received a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in 2010, a Vici grant in 2016, and two NWO free competition grants (in 2008 and 2012). He was an officer of the SIAM activity goup in algebraic geometry SI(AG)^2 from 2012-2017, Chair of the MEGA 2015 Executive Committee, and Chair of the local organising committee of SIAM AG 19 in Bern. He is associate editor of Experimental Mathematics, SIAM Journal of Applied Algebra and Geometry, and Linear and Multilinear Algebra. Draisma''s research interests concern the interplay between combinatorics, statistics, and algebraic geometry. Key terms are tropical geometry, algebraic statistics, and symmetric systems of polynomial equations in infinitely many variables.