A number of research programmes are currently underway focused on rogue waves, including:
* In the course of Project MaxWave, researchers from the GKSS Research Centre, using data collected by ESA satellites, identified a large number of radar signatures that have been portrayed as evidence for rogue waves. Further research is underway to develop better methods of translating the radar echoes into sea surface elevation, but at present this technique is not proven.
* The Australian National University, working in collaboration with Hamburg University of Technology and the University of Turin, have been conducting experiments in nonlinear dynamics to try to explain so-called rogue or killer waves. The "Lego Pirate" video has been widely used and quoted to describe what they call "super rogue waves", which their research suggests can be up to five times bigger than the other waves around them.
* The European Space Agency continues to do research into rogue waves by radar satellite.
* United States Naval Research Laboratory, the science arm of the Navy and Marine Corps published results of their modelling work in 2015.
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology research in this field is ongoing. Two researchers there partially supported by the Naval Engineering Education Consortium  have considered the problem of short-term prediction of rare, extreme water waves and have developed and published their research on an effective predictive tool of about 25 wave periods. This tool can give ships and their crews a two- to three-minute warning of potentially catastrophic impact allowing crew some time to shut down essential operations on a ship (or offshore platform). The authors cite landing on an aircraft carrier as a prime example.
* The University of Colorado and the University of Stellenbosch
* Kyoto University
* Swinburne University of Technology in Australia recently published work on the probabilities of rogue waves.
* The University of Oxford Department of Engineering Science published a comprehensive review of the science of rogue waves in 2014. In 2019, A team from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh recreated the Draupner wave in a lab.
* University of Western Australia
* Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia
* Extreme Seas Project funded by the EU.
* At Umeå University in Sweden, a research group in August 2006 showed that normal stochastic wind-driven waves can suddenly give rise to monster waves. The nonlinear evolution of the instabilities was investigated by means of direct simulations of the time-dependent system of nonlinear equations.
* The Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory did research in 2002, which dispelled the long-held contentions that rogue waves were of rare occurrence.
* The University of Oslo has conducted research into crossing sea state and rogue wave probability during the Prestige accident; nonlinear wind-waves, their modification by tidal currents, and application to Norwegian coastal waters; general analysis of realistic ocean waves; modelling of currents and waves for sea structures and extreme wave events; rapid computations of steep surface waves in three dimensions, and comparison with experiments; and very large internal waves in the ocean.
* The National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom
* Scripps Institute of Oceanography in the United States
* Ritmare project in Italy.
* University of Copenhagen and University of Victoria