Dr. Bharat Soni earned a BS (1971) in statistics (minor: mathematics) and an MS (1974) in statistics (minor: operations research) at M.S. University in India.  Subsequently, he earned a PhD (1978) in applied mathematics at the University of Texas in Arlington, TX.  After finishing his doctoral work, he served as a program analyst at Sverdrup Technology, Inc., and as Adjunct Associate Professor in mathematical sciences at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.  In 1987, he became an Associate Research Professor in the computer science department at the University of Alabama at Huntsville.  The following year he was appointed Associate Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Mississippi State University (MSU), where he achieved the rank of Professor in 1994.  In 1991 he became president of CSS Inc. in Starkville, MS, and in 2000 became Director of the Center for Computational Systems at the Engineering Research Center at MSU.  In 2002, he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Dr. Soni is a reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computations and the Journal of Computer Aided Design.  He has chaired a number of national and international conferences.  In 2000, he was recognized as an Outstanding Researcher at MSU, and in 2001, he was recognized as an Eminent Scholar in the College of Engineering at MSU.  His excellence was acknowledged with the honor of the Hearin-Hess Distinguished Professor title in the MSU College of Engineering five separate times during his tenure there.