[7] SRI's focus areas include biomedical sciences, chemistry and materials, computing, Earth and space systems, economic development, education and learning, energy and environmental technology, security, national defense, sensing, and devices.

Herbert Hoover, then a trustee of Stanford University, was also an early proponent of an institute but became less involved with the project after being elected president of the United States.

[10] In August 1945, Maurice Nelles, Morlan A. Visel, and Ernest L. Black of Lockheed made the first attempt to create the institute with the formation of the "Pacific Research Foundation" in Los Angeles.

In 1945, Heald wrote a report recommending a research institute on the West Coast and a close association with Stanford University with an initial grant of $500,000 (equivalent to $6,711,000 in 2023).

[12] The trustees were named as the corporation's general members, and elected SRI's directors (later known as presidents); if the organization were dissolved, its assets would return to Stanford University.

In 1947, the Air Force wanted to determine the expansion potential of the U.S. aircraft industry; SRI found that it would take too long to escalate production in an emergency.

[22] In April 1953, Walt and Roy Disney hired SRI (and in particular, Harrison Price) to consult on their proposal for establishing an amusement park in Burbank, California.

SRI selected a larger site in Anaheim, prepared reports about the operation, provided on-site administrative support for Disneyland, and acted in an advisory role as the park expanded.

[26] In 1952, the Technicolor Corporation contracted with SRI to develop a near-instantaneous, electro-optical alternative to the manual timing process during film copying.

[28] In 1954, Southern Pacific asked SRI to investigate ways of reducing damage during rail freight shipments by mitigating shock to railroad box cars.

[29][30] In the 1950s, SRI worked under the direction of the Bank of America to develop ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting) and magnetic ink character recognition (MICR).

[32][33][34] Douglas Engelbart, the founder of SRI's Augmentation Research Center (ARC), was the primary force behind the design and development of the multi-user oN-Line System (or NLS), featuring original versions of modern computer-human interface elements including bit-mapped displays, collaboration software, hypertext, and precursors to the graphical user interface such as the computer mouse.

[40] In the early 1960s, Hewitt Crane and his colleagues developed the world's first all-magnetic digital computer,[41] based upon extensions to magnetic core memories.

The technology was licensed to AMP Inc., who then used it to build specialized computers for controlling tracks in the New York City Subway and on railroad switching yards.

In the 1970s, SRI developed packet-switched radio (a precursor to wireless networking),[47] over-the-horizon radar,[48][49] Deafnet,[50][51] vacuum microelectronics, and software-implemented fault tolerance.

[2][56][57] In 1972, physicists Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ undertook a series of investigations of psychic phenomena sponsored by the CIA, for which they coined the term remote viewing.

[58][59][60] Among other activities, the project encompassed the work of consulting "consciousness researchers" including artist/writer Ingo Swann, military intelligence officer Joseph McMoneagle, and psychic/illusionist Uri Geller.

[64] VALS was formally inaugurated as an SRI product in 1978 and was called "one of the ten top market research breakthroughs of the 1980s" by Advertising Age magazine.

To train armored combat units during battle exercises, SRI developed the Deployable Force-on-Force Instrumented Range System (DFIRST), which uses GPS satellites, high-speed wireless communications, and digital terrain map displays.

[77] SRI created the Centibots in 2003, one of the first and largest teams of coordinated, autonomous mobile robots that explore, map, and survey unknown environments.

[82][83] With DARPA-funded research, SRI contributed to the development of speech recognition and translation products[84][85] and was an active participant in DARPA's Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) program.

[85] SRI developed DynaSpeak speech recognition technology, which was used in the handheld VoxTec Phraselator, allowing U.S. soldiers overseas to communicate with local citizens in near real-time.

[91] In the 2000s, SRI worked on Pathway Tools software for use in bioinformatics and systems biology to accelerate drug discovery using artificial intelligence and symbolic computing techniques.

[93] SRI researchers made the first observation of visible light emitted by oxygen atoms in the night-side airglow of Venus, offering new insight into the planet's atmosphere.

[99] In 2006, SRI was awarded a $56.9 million contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to provide preclinical services for the development of drugs and antibodies for anti-infective treatments for avian influenza, SARS, West Nile virus and hepatitis.

[108] For the National Science Foundation (NSF), SRI operates the advanced modular incoherent scatter radar (AMISR), a novel relocatable atmospheric research facility.

[111] In February 2014, SRI announced a "photonics-based testing technology called FASTcell" for the detection and characterization of rare circulating tumor cells from blood samples.

The test is aimed at cancer-specific biomarkers for breast, lung, prostate, colorectal, and leukemia cancers that circulate in the bloodstream in minute quantities, potentially diagnosing those conditions earlier.

[9] SRI is primarily based on a 63-acre (0.25 km2; 0.10 sq mi) campus located in Menlo Park, California, which is considered part of Silicon Valley.

Young Jr.[134] Its notable researchers include Elmer Robinson (meteorologist), co-author of the 1968 SRI report to the American Petroleum Institute (API) on the risks of fossil fuel burning to the global climate.