Sanders demonstrated that the response regulators in the two-component regulatory systems were phosphorylated on an aspartate residue and that they were protein phosphatases with a covalent intermediate.
[12] He was a visiting scientist at the University of California at San Francisco, and then a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, which is affiliated with MIT.
[17][18] His work on the Ebola virus led to his participation in the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program, a product of the Nunn-Lugar legislation.
He has investigated the transmission of viruses from other animals, especially birds, to humans and has been invited to speak on ethics,[20] biodefense, evolution, gene therapy, vaccination and influenza viruses in public forums including regular interviews on WIBC in Indianapolis,[21] He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his work on an enzyme that is involved in production of the greenhouse gas and potential energy source, methane[22] He is also an American Cancer Society Research Scholar.
Sanders has been a vocal critic of the Science article authored by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and Paul Davies in which the discovery of arsenic-based life is claimed.
[26] He was an early advocate of focusing on regional centers as places for treatment of Ebola virus victims in the United States[27] and asserted that patients should share their travel history whenever they meet with a medical provider, stating, "If you go to South America or East Asia there is a different ensemble of possible diseases associated with a set of symptoms, and the physician won't necessarily think about them if he isn't aware of where you've been traveling recently.
[39] According to The New York Times, Sanders has been responsible for contacting scientific journals and obtaining corrections and retractions of articles by Carlo M. Croce.
[47] Sanders was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the 4th District of Indiana in 2004, 2006, and 2010, losing to Steve Buyer in the first two elections and to Todd Rokita in the third.
[48][49][50] Years later, in a discussion about gerrymandering, Sanders called the seat he ran for in Indiana's 4th Congressional District as having been drawn so that it was "No Republican Left Behind.
[56] Sanders began his term on the Council in 2016, after a campaign in which he promised "careful oversight", "transparency" and "quantitative analytical skills".
He later wrote an op-ed explaining his reasons which included an "assault on the constitutional right to free speech", “Indiana voter ID laws (the new poll taxes)”, “the war on drugs” and “the very name of our state” as a reminder of the unfair treatment of Native Americans.
[60] In 2018, Sanders sponsored a resolution to encourage businesses to stop using plastic straws and utensils, which passed the city council.