Having previously served as a Chief Academic Officer, Associate Provost, Dean, and Research Center Director, Dr. Sands is currently the Associate Dean of the Naval Postgraduate School, and International Scholar Laureate of the Golden Key International Honor Society, a Fellow of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and panelist of both the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship program and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship. He holds one patent in spacecraft attitude control and publishes non-government funded research under his continued affiliation with Stanford University or Columbia University.