Prof. Badu is an Associate Professor in organic and natural products chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her research seeks to promote indigenous underutilized oilseeds and nuts to address food security challenges in Ghana. Mercy Badu applies novel approaches to identify and characterize the chemical functionality of extracts from different parts of plants, establish their macronutrients, micronutrients, anti-nutritional factors and medicinal properties, targeting SDGs 2 and 3.

Prof. Badu has been awarded a number of research grants. She has to her credit the Africa Academy of Science - Climate Impact Research and Capacity Leadership Enhancement (AAS-CIRCLE) post-doctoral fellowship (2017) and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Individual Research Grant (2017 - 2019), the International Foundation for Science (IFS) grant (2018 – 2021), the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda (LIRA) 2030 Africa research grant (2019 – 2021), the Organization for Women in Science in the Developing World (OWSD) Early Career Fellowship award (2019 – 2023), the Cambridge Africa ALBORADA research grant (2020-2023), ACU Martha Farrell fellowship (2023),  International Foundation for Science (IFS) Renewal grant (2022 – 2024) and currently a collaborative grant from the Ministry of Environment Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI) Ghana (2023-2025).

These research grants have enabled high quality research whilst giving Mercy the ability to set up a good working research laboratory equipped with significant equipment, chemical reagents and glassware to increase the value of the chemistry department and KNUST as whole.

Mercy has up to 40 publications