Kaufman was internationally recognized for his contributions to information technology and specifically to visualization and graphics. He was elected to the highest level of a Fellow of IEEE "for contributions to and leadership in visualization and computer graphics," an ACM Fellow "for seminal contributions to and leadership in visualization, especially in volume visualization and its applications," and received the prestigious IEEE Visualization Career Award “for seminal work in the theory and practice of volume visualization." Kaufman also received the 1995 IEEE Outstanding Contribution Award, 1998 ACM Service Award, 1999 IEEE Computer Society's Meritorious Service Award, 2002 State of New York Entrepreneur Award, 2004 IEEE Harold Wheeler Award, and 2005 State of New York Innovative Research Award. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences.

Kaufman has conducted research for over 40 years in visualization, graphics, virtual reality, user interfaces, multimedia, and their applications, especially in biomedicine. He has published extensively totaling in excess of 300 refereed papers, books, and book chapters, more than 250 conference presentations and non-refereed manuscripts, and has been awarded/filed more than 40 patents, most of which have been licensed. He has been a principal/co-principal investigator on more than 100 research grants. His work has been featured in numerous media communications, including Science, New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, PC Week, Good Morning America, Fox TV and Newsday.