BERI-SERI Collaboration

The BERI-SERI Collaboration is a structured partnership between two organizations focused on reducing existential risk. The Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative (BERI), founded in 2017 by Andrew Critch, is a US-based 501(c)(3) public charity whose mission is to improve human civilization's long-term prospects for survival and flourishing. BERI's primary model is to collaborate with university research groups working on existential risk, providing them with services and support that would be administratively or financially difficult for their home universities to provide. The Stanford Existential Risks Initiative (SERI) is an interdepartmental program at Stanford University, co-directed by Professor Stephen Luby (medicine/infectious diseases) and Dr. Paul Edwards (senior research scholar at CISAC). SERI was launched in 2020 and hosts academic scholarship and cross-talk on existential risks including AI safety, biosecurity, nuclear threats, and extreme climate change. SERI is housed within the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute. The collaboration between BERI and SERI began as a trial collaboration around 2020. After demonstrating its value, BERI raised approximately $60,000 in late 2020 to promote the partnership to a main collaboration, which was finalized in early 2021. As a main collaboration, BERI provides SERI with ongoing administrative and operational support. The collaboration's most visible program is the SERI Summer Fellowship, a 10-week full-time research program that matches Stanford students with mentors working on existential risk reduction. BERI handles the financial and administrative aspects of the fellowship, including stipend payments. Open Philanthropy has supported this program with grants of $210,000 and $400,000 to BERI specifically for the SERI summer fellowships. As of 2025, SERI remains one of BERI's approximately 10 main university collaborations, alongside groups at UC Berkeley, MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, UMass Amherst, and the University of Chicago. The SERI Summer Fellowship continues to operate, with applications open for summer 2026.

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