Acronym: WESRF for Wallace Energy Systems & Renewables Facility

The WESRF research center has been named

in memory of [Alan] Wallace, who died in 2006, but the Wallace Energy Systems & Renewables Facility (WESRF) is familiarly known as “We Surf.”

Alan Wallace was a professor of electrical engineering at Oregon State University, where he along with Annette von Jouanne and others shared their fascination of ocean's power and studied wave-energy converters.
At WESRF, research and testing is focusing on (although not limited to) surfing objects including an all-electric naval ship, a hovercraft and buoys such as wave-energy converters designed by von Jouanne.

Reference
Elizabeth Rusch: Catching a Wave • Engineer Annette von Jouanne is pioneering an ingenious way to generate clean, renewable electricity from the sea. Smithsonian July 2009, Volume 40, Number 4, pp. 66-71.