Şahin graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1988.[2] She completed her Ph.D. in 1994 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her dissertation, Tiling Representations of
Actions and
-Equivalence in Two Dimensions, was supervised by Daniel Rudolph.[3]
She joined the mathematics faculty at North Dakota State University, where she worked from 1994 until 2001, when she moved to DePaul University. At DePaul, she became a full professor in 2010,[2] and co-directed a master's program in Middle School Mathematics.[4] She moved again to Wright State as Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics in 2015.[2] In addition to serving as Dean, Şahin focuses her research on ergodic theory and symbolic dynamics, areas within dynamical systems that examine the long-term behavior of systems through a mathematical lens. She is also involved in initiatives that support student success in STEM fields and serves as an advocate for increased access to mathematics education for underrepresented groups.[5]