Sonal is a Bioinformatics Scientist at International Livestock Research Institute. In her current capacity she is responsible to develop data analysis strategies relevant to gene discovery, immuno-informatics and genotyping for ILRI vaccines group. She is involved in vaccine and diagnostics projects of the cattle diseases East Coast fever and African swine fever.

Prior to joining ILRI, Sonal worked as a postdoctoral scientist for the H3Africa consortium through icipe where she was involved in research on Trypanosomiasis and Bee Health as well as bioinformatics training. She also carried out post-doctoral research at KEMRI Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya where some of her work entailed using molecular epidemiology to understand transmission of AMR genes between community and hospital environments. She also held a joint post-doctoral fellowship at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and ILRI working on comparative genomics of Theileria parva isolates.

Sonal obtained her BSc degree in Computational Biology from Warwick University, UK (2003), a MSc degree in Bioinformatics from Leicester University, UK (2005), and a PhD degree in Bioinformatics from University of Pretoria, South Africa (2009).