Along with Ikaros Bigi, he was awarded the 2004 Sakurai Prize for his work on CP violation and B meson decays.

He was a researcher at Columbia University from 1971 to 1974 and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

His major works are the proposal of a renormalizable gauge fixing method in broken gauge symmetric theory and the development of the theory of CP violations in B meson decays that has proven the Kobayashi-Maskawa Theory and has given a strong motivation for the experiments in Belle at KEK, Japan and BaBar at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, USA as well as fixing the necessary parameters of the accelerators to perform the experiments.

As a devout Roman Catholic, Sanda is an ordained permanent deacon at St. Mary's Cathedral in Tokyo.

He is also the author of the book "As a Scientist, Why Do I Believe in God", which describes his relationship between physics and Christianity.