Alumni Down Under
3 Panthers Play Critical Roles in the World’s Largest Coral Reef Restoration and Adaptation Research Program
By Erin Alvarado ’16
After they graduate, many Florida Tech alumni embark on new adventures and begin exciting careers around the world. Less often, these careers merge, bringing three alumni from different decades across the globe to work on the world’s largest coral reef restoration and adaptation research program.
But such is the case for David Lennon ’87 A.S., ’89, Kevin Erickson ’07 and Carly Randall ’16 Ph.D., Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) employees and members of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP), who each play different yet equally critical roles in helping the Great Barrier Reef resist, adapt to and recover from climate change impacts.
The AIMS’ goal is to provide decision-makers with an innovative suite of safe, acceptable and cost-effective interventions to help protect the reef from the impacts of climate change in conjunction with reef management and carbon emission reduction best practices.
Lennon, project manager for reef monitoring and recovery projects, oversees several initiatives, including a coral reef condition indicator for managers; a new fish stock assessment of nursery habitats and nearshore and offshore reefs in the Great Barrier Reef; and EcoRRAP, which collects essential data to guide reef interventions.
“Growing up, I was obsessed with diving and being underwater. Even now, whenever I look at water, fresh or salt, I want to be under it,” Lennon says, “This inspired me to want to know how things work and fueled my desire to understand how marine ecosystems function.”
Erickson, RRAP’s industry development lead, spearheads the program’s efforts to scale the research and development phase to the deployment phase—which will enable outputs to increase from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of deployed corals over the coming decade—by incorporating industry partnerships.
“I have been fortunate to work with several Florida Tech marine biology alumni since graduating,” Erickson says. “It is great to once again be working alongside fellow Panthers on such an important mission.”
As a senior research scientist, Randall leads several AIMS projects focused on understanding the early life-history ecology of stony corals and the drivers of reef recovery following disturbances. She works to describe the complex and nonlinear relationships between the environment and recruit survival and to apply this knowledge to improve reef restoration practices. She does this by combining coral-spawning research with mechanistic laboratory experiments and field deployments.
She also works closely with Aboriginal communities to build capacity and empower Traditional Custodians to manage their sea countries.
“My Ph.D. research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, allowed me to develop my lab, field and analytical skills in coral reef science that I apply to restoration science today,” Randall says. “My time at Florida Tech was a wonderful period of scientific growth and exploration, and I’m so thankful for the opportunity and education I received.”
While RRAP is initially focused on developing technology and solutions to help the Great Barrier Reef, together, Lennon, Erickson and Randall are helping develop solutions that could also be applied to other reefs in Australia and around the world.
This piece was featured in the winter 2024 edition of Florida Tech Magazine.
