Sinem Ayhan received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Bologna in July 2014. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she worked for five years as an expert at the Undersecretariat of Treasury in Turkey.
She was a Research Associate at IZA from December 2014 to October 2017 and became an IZA Research Fellow in November 2017.
After her tenure at IZA, Sinem worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Münster and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin. She subsequently worked as a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg until April 2025.
Since May 2025, she has been working at the Department of Economics at Middle East Technical University (METU) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Fellow.
Her research interests include labor economics, policy evaluation, gender inequality, household welfare, climate change, and the green transition.