Başkent then moved to Los Angeles, CA, where she obtained a PhD in Biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California in 2003 for her work on "Speech recognition under conditions of frequency-place compression and expansion",[1] under supervision of Robert V. Shannon at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles, CA.
[3] In 2009, Başkent moved to the Netherlands after obtaining a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of the University Medical Center Groningen.
[6] Başkent's principal research area focuses on speech perception with cochlear implants and hearing impairment.
Between 2010 and 2016, she has published numerous studies on phonemic restoration and interrupted speech in listeners with hearing impairment.
[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] More recently, her work has focused on voice, emotion and speaking style perception in cochlear implant users,[17][18][19][20][21][22] development of voice and emotion perception in children with normal and impaired hearing,[23][24] cognitive and neural mechanisms of normal and impaired hearing,[25][26][27][28] and music training in cognitive rehabilitation.