Professor Bear has been the Dean of the School of Engineering at the Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee since 2003. He is a Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Civil Engineering of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel – where he has served as Vice President for Academic Affairs (1972-1976), Dean of Graduate School (1984-1986), and Dean of Civil Engineering (1995-1997). He was awarded Honorary Doctorates in Technological Sciences both by the Delft Univ. of Technology, Delft (1978), The Netherlands, and by E.T.H., Zurich, Switzerland (1988). He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, and was awarded the 1990 K. Hubbert Award by the National Ground Water Assoc. (USA). In 1998, he was awarded the Rothschild Prize in Engineering (Israel). In 2003 he was awarded the Excellence in Education Medal by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).
His consulting, teaching and research at many universities around the world cover the areas of groundwater hydrology and hydraulics, management of water resources, subsurface contamination and remediation, and the general theory of transport phenomena in porous media. On these subjects, Professor Bear has written 5 books and over 200 publications in scientific journals and edited volumes, and is the Chief Editor of the international Journal: TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA.