Following this, she was a postdoctoral research Fellow for Princeton University before being hired as a professor for Cornell's Department of Astronomy.
In 2005, Bean became a faculty member at Cornell University,[3] where her research focuses on cosmological tests of the nature of dark energy and gravity, and the physical origins of primordial inflation, using data from large-scale structure and the cosmic microwave background.
She is actively involved in a number of international astronomical surveys, including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), and the Euclid space mission.
[1] During her time at Cornell University, Bean served as the Senior Associate Dean for the university's Undergraduate Education department, where she was responsible for designing the curriculum, overseeing admissions into the program, and career development, among other things.
While she held this position within the university, she was partially responsible for introducing the data science minor to the school's Undergraduate Program.