Beam instability caused by the electron cloud has been observed in positron and proton storage rings and it is expected to be a limiting factor in the performance of the positron Damping Ring (DR) of future Linear Colliders such as ILC and CLIC. In the Positron Low Energy Ring (LER) of the PEP-II accelerator, we have installed vacuum chambers with rectangular grooves in a straight magnetic-free section to test this promising possible electron cloud mitigation technique. We have also installed a special chamber to monitor the secondary electron yield of TiN and TiZrV (NEG) coating, Copper, Stainless Steel and Aluminum under the effect of electron and photon conditioning in situ in the beam line. In this paper, we describe the ongoing R&D effort to mitigate the electron cloud effect for the ILC damping ring, the latest results on in situ secondary electron yield conditioning and recent update on the groove tests in PEP-II.