Section: Overview
Overview
Key publications
Research funding
Supervising & teaching
Career

Key details

Areas of expertise

  • Conservation genetics
  • Orchid conservation and genetics
  • Plant ecology
  • Plant recruitment and clonality
  • Weed ecology

Available to supervise research students

Not available for media queries

About Randall W. Robinson

Randall is Executive Director (Interim) of the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities in VU Research.

After completing undergraduate studies and working for the Victorian Government as a botanist for many years he returned to academia and completed an MSc and a PhD in plant ecology. The MSc investigated recruitment mechanisms and response to disturbance of grassland forb species and the PhD was in recruitment mechanisms and clonality in Melaleuca ericifolia.

He is currently undertaking research into recruitment and clonality in seagrass, allelopathy of invasive plants and genetics of the genus Cymbidium. Additionally, he is collaborating with a group of ecologists, geneticists and educators looking at two main areas of endeavour:

  • flight initiation distance in birds
  • long-term monitoring of environmental change in grassland and coastal ecosystems.

 

Randall’s work is published in a wide range of journals and industry publications and he has a special interest in providing talks and presentations to community and industry groups

Randall lectures into the Bachelor of Science (Specialisations in Biotechnology, Chemistry or Environmental Management), teaching and coordinating a variety of units and supervising projects, industry placements and research for third year ecology and environmental management undergraduate projects and honours, masters and PhD students.

In addition to his work on plant ecology, Randall is supervising students and Postdoctoral Research Fellows carrying out work on population ecology of Australian sea lions and Australian birds, most notably research into the genetic basis for flight initiation distance in black swans.

Qualifications

  • PhD (VicMelb)
  • MSc (VicMelb)

Key publications

Year Citation
2022 Khan, A., Asim, W., Ulhaq, A., & Robinson, R. W. (220701). A deep semantic vegetation health monitoring platform for citizen science imaging data. PLoS ONE, 17(7 July),

doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270625

2022 Khan, A., Asim, W., Ulhaq, A., & Robinson, R. W. (220101). A Multiview Semantic Vegetation Index for Robust Estimation of Urban Vegetation Cover. Remote Sensing, 14(1),

doi: 10.3390/rs14010228

2021 Uddin, M. N., Asaeda, T., Sarkar, A., Ranawakage, V. P., & Robinson, R. W. (211201). Conspecific and heterospecific plant-soil biota interactions of Lonicera japonica in its native and introduced range: implications for invasion success. Plant Ecology, 222(12), (1313-1324).

doi: 10.1007/s11258-021-01180-y

2021 Harun, M. AYA., Johnson, J., Uddin, M. N., & Robinson, R. W. (211124). Allelopathic Effects of Chrysanthemoides monilifera subsp. monilifera on Lolium rigidum in Wheat Field: Implications on the Reduction of Chemical Loads in Agro-Ecosystems. Frontiers in Agronomy, 3

doi: 10.3389/fagro.2021.785845

2021 Robinson, R. (210901). Cymbidium sigmoideum. Orchid Digest,, 85(4), (278-280).
2021 Robinson, R. (210901). Cymbidium alexanderi. Orchid Digest, 85(4), (272-275).
2021 Khan, A., Asim, W., Ulhaq, A., Ghazi, B., & Robinson, R. W. (210601). Health assessment of eucalyptus trees using siamese network from google street and ground truth images. Remote Sensing, 13(11),

doi: 10.3390/rs13112194

2020 Khan, A., Nawaz, U., Ulhaq, A., & Robinson, R. W. (201201). Real-time plant health assessment via implementing cloud-based scalable transfer learning on AWS DeepLens. PLoS ONE, 15(12 December),

doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243243

2020 Uddin, M. N., Robinson, R. W., & Asaeda, T. (201201). Nitrogen immobilization may reduce invasibility of nutrient enriched plant community invaded by Phragmites australis. Scientific Reports, 10(1),

doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58523-4

2020 Uddin, M. N., Asaeda, T., Shampa, S. H., & Robinson, R. W. (200701). Allelopathy and its coevolutionary implications between native and non-native neighbors of invasive Cynara cardunculus L.. Ecology and Evolution, 10(14), (7463-7475).

doi: 10.1002/ece3.6472

Research funding for the past 5 years

Please note:

  • Funding is ordered by the year the project commenced and may continue over several years.
  • Funding amounts for contact research are not disclosed to maintain commercial confidentiality.
  • The order of investigators is not indicative of the role they played in the research project.

Sustainable manufacturing in Vietnam extension of services - Assessing best practice in Eucalyptus production in Vietnam
From: Viet Nhat Vina Ptry Ltd
Other investigators: Prof Manh Hoang
For period: 2018-2019
Not disclosed

Supervision of research students at VU

Available to supervise research students

Not available for media queries

Completed supervision of research students at VU

No. of students Study level Role
2 PhD Associate supervisor
7 PhD Principal supervisor
1 PhD Acting supervisor
1 PhD Acting Principal supervisor
2 PhD by Publication Principal supervisor
1 PhD by Publication Associate supervisor
1 PhD Integrated Associate supervisor

Completed supervision of research students at VU

Students & level Role
PhD (2) Associate supervisor
PhD (7) Principal supervisor
PhD (1) Acting supervisor
PhD (1) Acting Principal supervisor
PhD by Publication (2) Principal supervisor
PhD by Publication (1) Associate supervisor
PhD Integrated (1) Associate supervisor

Key academic roles

Dates Role Department / Organisation
Aug 2020 - Present
Executive Director Institute for Sustainable & Liveable Cities
Victoria University (Melbourne)
Dates Role & Department/Organisation
Aug 2020 -
Present
Executive Director Institute for Sustainable & Liveable Cities
Victoria University (Melbourne)