Photaki was selected in 1962 by the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare among an international pool of candidates to conduct research by the side of Nobel laureate Vincent du Vigneaud at Cornell University. While in New York, she also delivered a short series of lectures both in Cornell and at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Back in the University of Athens after Cornell, Photaki continued her research and was soon habilitated in 1965 following a thesis on oxytocin, building on the work she started under du Vigneaud. Despite her internationally distinguished research and sizeable recent grants from the NHRF and the United States NIH, she was not allowed to teach by the Greek military junta until 1969 and was intensively interrogated by the Cities Police Security Directorate on account of her anti-dictatorial political beliefs.
Photaki's teaching career was purposefully hindered by the Ministry of Education until the restoration of democracy in 1974; indeed, in 1975 she was promoted to extraordinary professor, a decade after receiving her habilitation. Shortly afterwards, in 1977, she was promoted to full professor (as Professor of Organic Chemistry) and Head of the Organic Chemistry Laboratory, both positions once held by her mentor Zervas. Photaki died in 1983 at the age of 62.
She was reported to spend very long hours at the laboratory, occasionally from "8 in the morning till 10 in the evening". In her 20-year career as a member of the University of Athens faculty, she supervised (alone or jointly with other colleagues) more than 15 doctoral dissertations.