He has over 35 years of experience in the fields of meteoritics, is an Associate Editor of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, and has helped find many meteorites in Antarctica working with the ANSMET Program.

Dr. Sandford also does extensive work in the areas of laboratory astrophysics, astrochemistry, and astrobiology, and participates in infrared astronomy studies using ground-based, airborne, and spaceborne observatories. He has used the combined techniques of infrared astronomy and laboratory studies to identify new molecular species in space, many of interest to astrobiology (for example, amino acids, nucleobases, and sugars), and determine how they are formed. Dr. Sandford was a Co-Investigator on the successful Stardust Discovery Mission, which returned collected samples from Comet Wild 2 to Earth on January 15, 2006. Dr. Sandford led part of the effort to study the returned samples. He was also a Co-Investigator on the joint Japanese-US Hayabusa Mission that brought back samples of asteroid Itokawa to Earth in June 2010 and he is currently a Co-Investigator on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned samples of asteroid Bennu to Earth on September 24, 2023. In recognition of his work on extraterrestrial materials, asteroid 16035 Sasandford was named for him in 2004.