Crown-of-thorns sea stars (COTS) are among the most studied coral reef organisms, owing to their propensity to undergo major population irruptions, which contribute to significant coral loss and reef degradation throughout the Indo-Pacific. Renewed efforts to advance understanding and management of COTS on the Great Barrier Reef requires explicit consideration of relevant and tractable knowledge gaps. A recent survey asked active and/or established COTS researchers to pose critical research questions that they believe should be addressed to improve the understanding and management of COTS on the GBR. Questions submitted were categorised into seven themes: feeding ecology, demography, distribution and abundance, predation, settlement, management, and environmental change. These were further assigned to 48 specific topics nested within the seven themes. Research questions posed mostly related to themes of demography (46 questions) and management (48 questions). The dominant topics, meanwhile, were the incidence of populations irruptions (16 questions), feeding ecology of larval sea stars (15 questions), effects of elevated water temperature on COTS (13 questions), and predation on juveniles (12 questions). Here, I will highlight the significant progress made in addressing these knowledge gaps, as well as provide a roadmap to guide future research efforts to improve our understanding of the ecology and management of COTS.