The Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center is a research and development center housed within FAU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science. The SNMREC Executive Director reports to the Dean of the College and works on big-picture strategy with the SNMREC Core Management Team, which is composed of senior SNMREC personnel and faculty and researchers from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, the Center for Environmental Studies, the College, and the  Division of Research. Implementing this strategy falls to the SNMREC Executive Director, the Scientific Director, and the Program Manager.

The Center takes a two-pronged approach to tactics. The engineering design work for SNMREC equipment—the testing infrastructure—is the responsibility of a team of engineers on the SNMREC staff, while most of the basic research and development is folded into the graduate programs of various FAU colleges. Typically, a manageable portion of a research and development project will be assigned to a graduate student as a thesis or dissertation project, and the student and his/her graduate advisor receive support for their activities. Using this model, SNMREC is currently supporting the work of some 36 graduate students in 4 FAU colleges.

One of the most important capabilities at FAU, from SNMREC’s perspective, is the large-scale fabrication facilities at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. This in-house capability allows close interactions of the SNMREC engineers with the fabricators, who have extensive experience with blue-water engineering development. As a result, the SNMREC testing equipment has the levels of safety and reliability appropriate for the demanding conditions offshore.

In the bigger picture, SNMREC is a member of the Florida Energy Systems Consortium and works closely at the national level with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the other two National Marine Renewable Energy Centers (NNMREC (OSU) and NNMREC (UW) in the northwest and HINMREC in Hawai‘i).