She received her PhD from the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Emory Medical School, studying the structure–function relationship of monoamine oxidases. She was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow of the NASA Astrobiology Institute and a Research Group Leader at Harvard University Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology before joining Arizona in 2017 where she focused on reconstructing key enzymatic intermediates between biological activity and global geochemical reservoirs throughout the Earth's deep history through molecular evolution, biochemistry and genomics. The overall goal of Betul's research group is to assess the possible environmental impacts of ancient enzymes on global-scale signatures that record biological activity.