The Berkeley SETI Research Center (BSRC) conducts experiments searching for optical and electromagnetic transmissions from intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations.

[3] The Berkeley SETI Research Center also hosts the Breakthrough Listen program,[4][5][6] which is a ten-year initiative with $100 million funding begun in July 2015 to actively search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the universe, in a substantially expanded way, using resources that had not previously been extensively used for the purpose.

[8] Announced in July 2015, the project is observing for thousands of hours every year on two major radio telescopes, the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, the Parkes Observatory in Australia, and the Automated Planet Finder telescope.

[1][10] The center also created the SETI@home, an Internet-based public volunteer computing project employing the BOINC software platform, hosted by their Space Sciences Laboratory.

The NIROSETI instrument employs a new generation of near-infrared (900 to 1700 nm) detectors, cooled at -25 °C, that have a high speed response (>1 GHz) and gain comparable to photomultiplier tubes, while also producing very low noise,[14] and significantly reducing false positives.