The colleges are often ascribed to various engineering fields in order to make them more relatable: Synergetics to Nuclear, Dynamics to Chemical/Mechanical, and Statics to Civil/Mechanical.
Having gone through the various storylines and actually listened to the NPCs inhabiting each college, however, I’m inclined to describe them in the following way:
Synergetics members are all about the concept: how things work, why they work the way they do, and how they relate to the bigger picture. Think Isaac Newton, whose theories of gravity were relatively radical.
Dynamics members are the prototypers. They’re on the cutting edge of new technologies because they’re the first to try and develop them; where Synergetics develops the theories, Dynamics puts them into action. Thomas Edison and Nikolai Tesla, both experimenting with uses for electricity in a world powered by steam, could be considered as falling under the purview of Dynamics.
Statics members concern themselves with refinement. They take existing technologies and make them more efficient, powerful, compact, compatible and accessible.
Some members of the colleges stay strictly within their lines; a number of those in Synergetics can be heard saying that they’re glad they can stick to their theories, rather than having to spend all their time tinkering. But there’s a lot of room for overlap, at least between Dynamics and the other two colleges (Statics and Synergetics don’t quite go together).
I’m inclined to say Snaff was a Synergetics member, as some of his most famous scientific contributions are theories on the properties of Dragon Energy.