He served as a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1963 until 1985. While there, Lauterbur conducted research on the development of the MRI. Along with his wife Joan, Lauterbur became a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1985. Lauterbur served as the professor for 22 years until he died on March 27, 2007 in Urbana, Illinois.