Serdar Sayan received his undergraduate degree from the Department of Economics at the  Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey in 1985. The next year, he was awarded the Fulbright Grant to pursue an M.A. degree in economics at the Ohio State University in Columbus, USA, where he received his degree in 1988. He then studied towards his Ph.D. and worked as a research assistant in the AED Econ Department at the same university. After obtaining his degree in 1992, he returned to Turkey and taught at Bilkent University in Ankara.  Before leaving Bilkent in 2006, he taught graduate courses as a Visiting Professor at the Ohio State University in 2003-2004, and worked as a GDN Visiting Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Winter 2005. He also advised the Research Department of the Turkish Undersecretariat for Foreign Trade in Turkey between 2006 and 2009.

In 2006, he moved to TOBB University of Economics and Technology, also in Ankara, where he currently teaches and serves as the Director of the Graduate School for Social Sciences and as the Vice Dean of the College of Economics and Administrative Sciences. He concurrently directs the Entrepreneurship Institute at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV).

Prof. Sayan's main areas of research are international economics, computational economics and demography. He has edited books himself, contributed many refereed articles to several journals and edited volumes, and wrote monographs. He also wrote op-ed columns that appeared in daily papers published in different countries across the world, and frequently gave interviews to print and broadcast media in Turkey and abroad.

He has been a recipient of various teaching, research and service awards, including the prestigious Young Scientist of the Year Award of the Parlar Foundation in 2002, and has been a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum.

He was the editor-in-chief of International Economics and Foreign Trade Policies, a refereed journal published in Turkish, over 2006-2009 period and has served the profession in various capacities as guest editor, referee, or editorial board/program committee member for different journals and conferences nationally and internationally.

Prof. Sayan was elected President of the Middle East Economic Association to serve from 2010 to 2012, after previously serving as the Executive Secretary (2007-2009) and a Board Member (2004-2006). He also sat in the board of directors of the Turkish Economic Association (2001-2003), and is currently an active member of the Society for Computational Economics.

Prof. Sayan is the Director of the TEPAV Entrepreneurship Institute.