[6] She published her first single-author Acta Crystallographica paper, The unit cell and space group of ethyl nitrolic acid, whilst a student.

[1][5] In 1959, she returned to Britain to take up an Imperial Chemical Industries Fellowship at Birkbeck College, where she worked with J. D. Bernal, Rosalind Franklin, and Aaron Klug on the application of X-ray crystallography in molecular biology.

[7] Her work was criticised by Jerry Donohue, who disputed her Van der Waals distances and claimed that she had data problems.

[1][7] Sutor moved back to New Zealand, working briefly for the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research before taking leave to look after her father, who died in 1964.

[1] She bequeathed her estate of over £500,000 for the establishment of June Sutor Fellowships for research at Moorfields Eye Hospital into the prevention of blindness.

[19][20] Their work included 113 neutron diffraction patterns in the Cambridge Crystallographic Database, and found that Sutor's C–H⋯O bond distances were correct to within 0.03 Å (0.003 nm).