Saadet Erbay obtained her B.S. and M.S. in Mathematics from the Istanbul Technical University in 1980 and 1982, respectively, and her Ph.D. in 1988 from the same university. She worked in TUBITAK Marmara Research Institute, the University of Victoria (Canada), the Istanbul Technical University and Isik University. In 1996 she was promoted to full professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Istanbul Technical University and she was the chair of the Department of Mathematics from 2002 to 2010 at Isik University. She joined the faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences at Ozyegin University in September 2012.
Saadet Erbay was awarded the TUBITAK Incentive Award (Mathematics) in 1994 and the Sedat Simavi Science Award in 1996 for her research in the area of Applied Mathematics. She is a member of the Turkish Mathematical Society, the Turkish National Committee Theoretical and Applied Mechanics AMS (American Mathematical Society) and SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics).