The Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center is a research and development center managed within FAU’s Division of Research. Faculty and researchers from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, the Center for Environmental Studies, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and theCharles E. Schmidt College of Science also participate in helping to advise the SNMREC's staff on various multidisciplinary topics.

The Center takes a two-pronged approach to contributions. 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 has supported the work of more than 90 graduate and undergraduate students in 4 FAU colleges and 3 partner universities.

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.