She is the calm, authoritative voice that has made generations of Ghanaian secondary school students both nervous and proud. But beyond the television lights of the National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ), Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann stands as one of the most decorated scientists and engineering educators Ghana has ever produced.
Early life and education
Elsie Akosua Biraa Effah Kaufmann was born on 7 September 1969 in Accra and hails from Assin in the Central Region. After completing her secondary education at Aburi Girls’ Senior High School, she earned an International Baccalaureate Diploma at the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales in 1988 before heading to the United States for university.
At the University of Pennsylvania, she completed a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Bioengineering, graduating cum laude in 1992, followed by a Master of Science in Engineering in 1993 and a doctorate in Bioengineering in 1998.
After her doctorate, she served as a research supervisor at the Department of Chemistry at Rutgers University in New Jersey from May 1998 to June 2001.
Returning home to build a field
Rather than pursuing a career in the United States, Prof. Kaufmann made a deliberate choice to return to Ghana. She explained her decision plainly: “I realised that the difference I could make was to bring the subject to Ghana.” That decision led her to become the founding head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Ghana, and she has since helped establish other pioneering programmes in Physiotherapy, Radiography, Audiology, Medical Physics, and Prosthetics and Orthotics.
She joined the University of Ghana in 2001 as a lecturer and in August 2022 became Dean of the School of Engineering Sciences, the first woman to hold that position. Her research spans tissue engineering, biomaterials, and the design of affordable medical technologies for low-resource settings.
The quiz mistress of a nation
Since 2006, Prof. Kaufmann has been the quiz mistress of the NSMQ, Ghana’s annual televised science and mathematics competition for senior high school students. She personally reviews and solves every question before it appears on the show, a standard of rigour that has come to define the competition’s reputation for accuracy and credibility.
A historic engineering honour
In November 2025, Professor Effah Kaufmann was formally inducted as an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) at a distinguished ceremony in London, becoming the first Ghanaian since the Academy’s founding in 1976 to receive this honour. She signed the Academy’s historic roll book alongside some of the world’s most distinguished engineering figures, joining an elite cohort of only nine International Fellows elected worldwide in 2025 and the sole Ghanaian among 74 new Fellows announced in September that year.
Her official Academy citation reads: “Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann has founded pioneering biomedical engineering programmes and inspired thousands of children through education and outreach.”
Foundation, awards and memberships
In July 2022, she established the Elsie Effah Kaufmann Foundation (EEKF), a non-profit organisation focused on advancing STEM education in Ghana by closing resource gaps and providing students with access to hands-on research and innovation opportunities.
She has served as President of the Ghana Society of Biomedical Engineers and as a board member of the African Gifted Foundation Ghana and the British International School Ghana. Her other honours include the Golden Torch Award for International Academic Leadership (2018), the Impact Africa Summit Laureate for Education (2017), and the University of Ghana Best Teacher Award for the Sciences (2009). In 2024 she became the first African female to be honoured on the Penn Engineering Wall of Fame at the University of Pennsylvania.
Prof. Kaufmann is divorced and is a mother of three children.
