| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Science Technology Computer software Electronics Computer hardware IT consulting |
| Founded | Menlo Park, California (1946) |
| Founder(s) | Trustees of Stanford University |
| Headquarters | 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, California, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Key people | Curtis Carlson (President & CEO) |
| Services | Research |
| Revenue | US$495 million (in 2010)[1] |
| Employees | 2100 (in 2011)[2] |
| Website | www.sri.com |
SRI International (SRI), founded as Stanford Research Institute, is one of the world's largest contract research institutes. SRI, based in Menlo Park, California, was established by the trustees of Stanford University in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic development in the region. It was established as a nonprofit organization under U.S. and California laws.
In 1970, SRI formally separated from Stanford University and, in 1977, became known as SRI International. The separation was a belated response to Vietnam war protesters at Stanford University who believed that SRI's DARPA-funded work was essentially making the university part of the military-industrial complex. SRI's mission is discovery and the application of science and technology for knowledge, commerce, prosperity, and peace.[3] It performs client-sponsored research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses, and private foundations. It also licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships, and creates spin-off companies.[4]
SRI's headquarters are near the Stanford University campus. Curtis Carlson, Ph.D., is SRI's president and CEO. Year 2010 revenue for SRI was approximately $495 million.[1] As of 2011, SRI employs about 2,100 staff members.[2] Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of SRI since 1988, was fully integrated into SRI in January 2011.[5] SRI International Sarnoff is being used as a brand name for a period of time for business activities based in Princeton, New Jersey.
SRI's focus areas include telecommunication and telecommunications networks, computing, economic development and science and technology policy, education, energy and the environment, engineering systems, pharmaceuticals and health sciences, homeland security and national defense, materials and structures, video processing, computer vision, and robotics.[6] SRI has been awarded more than 1,000 patents and patent applications worldwide.[7]
Contents |
The idea for a research institute located in the Western United States was originally proposed in the 1920s and promoted (until SRI's eventual creation) by Robert E. Swain. Herbert Hoover, a trustee of Stanford University, was also a strong proponent for such an organization, but became less involved after he was elected president of the United States. The events of the Great Depression and World War II each delayed the organization's creation.[8]
There were three attempts at creating such an organization; the first was the proposal of a "Pacific Research Foundation", by Maurice Nelles, Morlan A. Visel, and Ernest L. Black of Lockheed.[8] Another was Henry T. Heald, then president of the Illinois Institute of Technology, who wrote a 1945 report detailing recommendations on the attributes of a research institute on the west coast, including a close association with Stanford University and an initial grant of $500,000 ($14,697,000 today).[8][9] Stanford University's dean of engineering, Fred Terman, also proposed an organization along these lines, but believed that it should focus more on faculty and student research interests than contract research.[8]
The trustees of Stanford University voted to create the organization in 1946, and structured it so that the new organization's goals were aligned with the university's charter; in particular, to advance scientific knowledge and to benefit the public at large, and not just the students of Stanford University.[8] The trustees were also named as the corporation's general members, and as such, elected SRI's directors (later known as presidents); it was also specified that if the organization was dissolved, its assets would return to Stanford University.[8]
The organization's first director was William F. Talbot.[8] Talbot was initially instructed by Stanford University president Donald Tresidder to avoid work that would conflict with the university's interests, particularly federal contracts that might attract political pressure. The drive to find work and the lack of support from Stanford University faculty caused the new research institute to violate this directive six months later through the pursuit of a contract with the Office of Naval Research.[8] As a result, Talbot was fired and replaced by Jesse Hobson, who had previously led the Armour Research Foundation, but the pursuit of contract work remained.[10]
SRI's first research project began in 1946: the investigation of improvement of the guayule plant as a source of rubber. In 1948, SRI began research and consultation with the petroleum company Chevron to develop an artificial substitute for tallow and coconut oil used in making soaps. SRI's investigation confirmed the potential of dodecyl benzene as a suitable replacement, and later Procter & Gamble used the substance as the basis of their successful laundry detergent, Tide.
On November 10–11, 1949, the First National Air Pollution Symposium was sponsored by SRI in Pasadena, California, in cooperation with the California Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California, and the University of California. Presentations were featured by authorities in air pollution, to exchange ideas and techniques in pollution research and, in general, to stimulate interest in the field. About 400 scientists, business executives, and civic leaders from the United States and Canada were present. SRI also co-sponsored the second and third Symposia in Pasadena on May 5–6, 1952 and April 18–20, 1955.[11]
In the early 1950s, Walt and Roy Disney sought SRI's advice regarding a small planned amusement park called Disneyland which they intended to build in Burbank, California. SRI provided them information on such topics as location, attendance patterns, and economic feasibility. SRI also selected a much larger site, in Anaheim, and prepared reports covering many aspects of operation. They also provided on-site administrative support and continued an advisory role for some time as the park expanded.
In 1952, the Technicolor Corporation contracted with SRI to develop a near-instantaneous electro-optical alternative to the manual process of timing during film copying. In 1959, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented the Scientific and Engineering Award jointly to SRI and Technicolor for their work on the design and development of the Technicolor electronic printing timer which greatly benefited the motion picture industry. In 1954, Southern Pacific asked SRI to investigate ways of reducing damage during rail freight shipments by mitigating shock to railroad box cars. This investigation led to the development of the Hydra-Cushion technology, which remains standard today.
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) which as of 2011 is still the industry standard in automated check processing.[12][13] The ERMA project was led by computer scientist Jerre Noe, who was at the time SRI's assistant director of engineering. In the late 1950s, the SRI radar under Walter Jaye provided many important satellite observation reports to USAF Project Space Track.
Douglas Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the oN-Line System, or NLS. He founded SRI's Augmentation Research Center (ARC), and his team there developed the original versions of many modern computer-human interface elements. These included: bit-mapped displays, collaboration software, hypertext, and precursors to the graphical user interface including the computer mouse. As a pioneer of human-computer interaction, Engelbart is arguably SRI's most notable alumnus. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2000.
In 1964, Bill English, then chief engineer at the ARC, built the first prototype of a computer mouse from Engelbart's design.[14] In the 1960s, liquid crystal display (LCD) technology was developed at RCA Laboratories, which became Sarnoff Corporation, SRI's wholly owned subsidiary that was fully integrated into SRI in 2011.
From 1966 through 1972, SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center developed the first mobile robot to reason about its actions. Named "Shakey the robot", the robot had a television camera, a triangulating range finder, and bump sensors. Shakey used software for perception, world-modeling, and acting. SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center marked its 45th anniversary in 2011. Hewitt Crane and his colleagues developed the world's first all-magnetic digital computer,[15] based upon extensions to magnetic core memories. The technology was licensed to AMP, who then used the technology to build specialized computers for controlling tracks in the New York City subway and on railroad switching yards.
In 1969, ARPANET, the world's first electronic computer network, was established on October 29 between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock's lab at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart's lab at SRI. Interface Message Processors at both sites served as the backbone of the first Internet.[16] The following year, Engelbart's lab installed the first TENEX system outside of BBN where it was developed. In addition to SRI and UCLA, UCSB and the University of Utah were part of the original four network nodes. By December 5, 1969, the entire four-node network was connected. In the 1970s, SRI developed other technologies, including packet-switched radio (precursor to wireless networking), over-the-horizon radar, Deafnet, malaria treatments, vacuum microelectronics, laser photocoagulation (a treatment for some eye maladies), and software-implemented fault tolerance.
In 1972, Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations or targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process. In order to explore the nature of remote viewing channel, the viewer in some experiments was secured in a double-walled copper-screened Faraday cage. Although this provided attenuation of radio signals over a broad range of frequencies, the researchers found that it did not alter the subject's remote viewing capability. They postulated that extremely low frequency (ELF) propagation might be involved, since Faraday cage screening is less effective in the ELF range. Such a hypothesis had previously been put forward by telepathy researchers in the Soviet Union.[17] One of the individuals involved in these initial studies was Uri Geller, who was a celebrity psychic.[18][19][20][21]
On November 22, 1977, SRI originated the first connection between three disparate networks. Data flowed seamlessly through a mobile van between SRI in Menlo Park, California and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles via London, England, across three types of networks: packet radio, satellite, and the ARPANET. This event is considered to be the first true Internet transmission.[22] On November 7, 2007, the Computer History Museum presented a 30th anniversary celebration of this demonstration, which included several participants from the 1977 event.[23]
In the late 1970s, social scientist and consumer futurist Arnold Mitchell created the Values and Lifestyles psychographic methodology (VALS) to explain changing U.S. values and lifestyles. VALS was formally inaugurated as an SRI product in 1978 and was later cited by Advertising Age as "one of the ten top market research breakthroughs of the 1980s."[24]
In the 1980s, SRI developed, among other things, Zylon, stealth technologies, improvements to ultrasound imaging, two-dimensional laser fluorescence imaging, a multimedia electronic mail system, intrusion detection expert systems, theory of non-interference in computer security, a multilevel secure (MLS) relational database system called Seaview, LaTeX,[25] and order-sorted algebra. On January 17, 1986, SRI.com became the 8th registered ".com" domain.[6] In the late 1980s and early 1990s the Artificial Intelligence Center developed the Procedural Reasoning System (PRS) that launched the field of BDI-based Intelligent agents.
In the 1990s, SRI developed, among other things, ground- and foliage-penetrating radar, Open Agent Architecture (OAA), dry-powder drugs, remote surgery (aka telerobotic surgery), bio-agent detection using upconverting phosphor technology, an easy-clean oven surface, the cancer drug Tirapazamine (now in clinical trials), ammonium dinitramide (ADN) – a novel environmentally benign oxidizer, network intrusion detection system, the Maude system (a declarative software language), the INCON and REDDE command and control system for the U.S. military, IGRS (integrated GPS radio system), an advanced military personnel and vehicle tracking system, natural language speech recognition, assisted hydrothermal oxidation for safe, cost-effective disposal of hazardous materials, an advanced letter sorting system for the United States Postal Service, PacketHop, a revolutionary peer-to-peer wireless technology to create scalable ad hoc networks, electroactive polymer aka “artificial muscle”, and several landmark education and economic studies. SRI's research in network intrusion detection led to the landmark patent infringement case SRI International, Inc. v. Internet Security Systems, Inc..
In the 2000s, SRI developed, among other things, new uses for diamagnetic levitation; the Deployable Force-on-Force Instrumented Range System (DFIRST), which uses GPS satellites, high-speed wireless communications, and digital terrain map displays to train armored combat units during battle exercises; live-virtual-constructive training systems for the California National Guard; Pathway Tools software, which aims to accelerate drug discovery by using artificial intelligence and symbolic computing techniques to analyze complex biological processes; BioCyc, SRI’s growing collection of genomic databases and software tools used by biologists to visualize genes within a chromosome, complete biochemical pathways, and the full metabolic maps of organisms; the advanced modular incoherent scatter radar (AMISR), a novel relocatable atmospheric research facility under construction for the National Science Foundation; the Centibots, one of the first and largest teams of coordinated, autonomous mobile robots that explore, map, and survey unknown environments; and speech recognition and translation functionality for the VoxTec Phraselator handheld speech translator, which has enabled U.S. soldiers overseas to communicate with local citizens in near real time.
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. SRI education researchers conducted the first national evaluation of the growing U.S. charter schools movement. For the World Golf Foundation, SRI compiled the first-ever estimate of the overall scope of the U.S. golf industry’s goods and services ($62 billion in 2000), providing a framework for monitoring the long-term growth of the industry. In April 2000, SRI formed Atomic Tangerine,[26] an independent consulting firm that was part of a systematic move to bring new technologies and services to market. SRI Chairman Emeritus Samuel Armacost and SRI CEO Curt Carlson were on the board of directors. In keeping with SRI International's pioneering reputation, Atomic Tangerine was a first-of-a-kind venture consulting firm.
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, hepatitis, and more. Also in 2006, SRI selected St. Petersburg, Florida as the site for a new marine technology research facility. SRI St. Petersburg aims to accelerate research and development of technologies related to ocean science, the maritime industry and port security. SRI's expansion into Florida is a collaboration with the University of South Florida College of Marine Science and its Center for Ocean Technology, and is supported by the City of St. Petersburg, Pinellas County, and the State of Florida.
In December 2007, SRI launched Siri, Inc. In April 2010, Apple acquired Siri, Inc., an SRI spin-off company.[27] In October 2011, Apple announced the Siri personal assistant as an integrated feature of the Apple iPhone 4S.[28] Siri's technology was born from SRI's work on the DARPA-funded CALO project, described by SRI as the largest artificial intelligence project ever launched.[29] Siri was co-founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (vice president, engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/vice president, design), together with Norman Winarsky (vice president of SRI Ventures). Investors included Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.[30] In May 2011, SRI was awarded a $42 million contract to operate the Arecibo Observatory from October 1, 2011 to September 30, 2016.[31]
In late 2011, SRI employed around 2,100 people.[2] In 2010, SRI had about $495 million in revenue.[32] In 2010, the United States Department of Defense consisted of 67% of awards by value; the remainder was composed of the National Institutes of Health (10%); United States businesses (5%); other United States agencies (5%); the National Science Foundation (4%); the United States Department of Education (3%); state and local governments (3%); international clients (3%); and foundations (1%).[32]
As of September 2010, approximately 1150 patents have been granted to SRI International and its employees.[33]
SRI is primarily based on a 63 acres (0.25 km2; 0.10 sq mi) campus located in Menlo Park, California, which is considered part of Silicon Valley. This campus encompasses 1,300,000 square feet (120,000 m2) of office and lab space.[34] In addition, SRI has a 254 acres (1.028 km2; 0.397 sq mi) campus in Princeton, New Jersey with 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) of research space. There are also offices in Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan. In total, SRI has 2,300,000 square feet (210,000 m2) of office and laboratory space.[34]
SRI International is organized into five units (generally referred to as divisions) that focus on specific subject areas.[35]
| Name | Research area | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Engineering & Systems Group | SRI's largest organizational unit, it focuses on engineering research including space, radar, signal processing, medical devices and robotics. It contains three divisions: Engineering R&D, Information Systems, and Products and Services. | [36] |
| Policy Division | This division works with government officials, private foundations and commercial clients on public policy issues, particularly in education, health, and human services. | [37] |
| Information and Computing Sciences Division | ICS is organized into four laboratories, one of which is the Artificial Intelligence Center. In general, this division focuses on develops in artificial intelligence, speech recognition, natural language processing, bioinformatics, and information security. | [38] |
| Biosciences Division | The biosciences division focuses on drug and biologic research, in particular on bringing new drugs from to market; SRI has helped move over 100 drugs into clinical trials. | [39][40] |
| Physical Sciences Division | This division focuses on research in chemistry, physics, optics, and nanotechnology. It's organized into seven laboratories. | [41] |
|
Working with investment and venture capital firms, SRI has launched more than 40 new ventures to date, including:[4]
|