Ayse Asatekin received bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in chemical engineering through the Program in Polymer Science and Technology (PPST) at MIT. She is also the co-founder and scientific advisor of Clean Membranes, Inc., a start-up company that commercialized the polyacrylonitrile-based membrane technology that she began developing during her doctoral research. Asatekin joined the Tufts Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2012.