In 1996, after a year at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Pea was recruited to SRI International, where he worked with colleagues to build a major national Center for Technology in Learning, until recruited to Stanford University in 2001. At Stanford, Pea co-founded Stanford's "H-STAR Institute" (Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research) with Byron Reeves, and is now H-STAR Institute Director. He is also co-director of the National Science Foundation-funded "LIFE Center", one of six national Science of Learning Centers, whose studies seek to inform better bridging of the sciences of informal and formal learning.