Dr Randall’s marine science career began in the Caribbean, working on the sexual reproduction of corals, and evaluating the impact of warming oceans on the early life-history stages of corals. 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 investigate the impacts of coral-disease outbreaks on coral populations in the Caribbean. 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, by identifying environmental drivers.

The need for effective and large-scale coral restoration became increasingly obvious during her years working in the Caribbean, which led her to pursue a career at the Australian Institute of Marine Science that combines developmental biology, marine ecology, & restoration science. Dr Randall’s current research focuses on overcoming the settlement and post-settlement survival bottlenecks in the early life-history stages of corals for use in reef-restoration activities.  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.