Research Team

Dr Randall is a benthic and restoration ecologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Her marine science career began in the Caribbean, where she evaluated the impact of warming oceans on coral reproduction and reef recovery. She then went to work with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s coral reef task, to evaluate the impact of sedimentation from land-use change on coral reproduction and recruitment. Later she returned to academia to study coral-disease outbreaks, and to investigate how the environment influenced disease dynamics. During this time, diseases were becoming a major challenge for reefs in the region, and Dr Randall applied spatial-ecological modelling approaches to test questions of disease causation and transmission. The need for effective and large-scale coral restoration became increasingly obvious during her years working in the Caribbean, which led her to the Australian Institute of Marine Science where she combines developmental biology, and marine ecology to advance restoration science. Presently, Dr Randall leads the Keppel Islands Coral Project, which focuses on overcoming the settlement and post-settlement survival bottlenecks in the early life-history stages of corals. She investigates coral larval-settlement cues and combines large spatial scale field studies with the results from laboratory experiments in the National Sea Simulator, to improve coral restoration methodologies.