Ethan Villalovoz

Hi! I am a recent graduate in Computer Science from Washington State University with a minor in Mathematics. My research spans robotics, machine learning, and AI safety, with a focus on reinforcement learning, human-AI collaboration, and large language models.

I’ve conducted research at Carnegie Mellon University (HARP Lab) on hierarchical reward learning, Oregon State University (CHARISMA Lab) on multi-robot navigation, and completed a software engineering internship at Google (STEP Intern), where I built scalable data processing and visualization systems to support internal analytics.

I am currently seeking full-time opportunities in AI/ML research and engineering while preparing to apply for Ph.D. programs in Fall 2025.

Please feel free to reach out about research or collaboration or any advice I can help with!

Email  /  CV (Jan. 2025)  /  Bio  /  Google Scholar  /  Twitter  /  Github

News

• 05/2025: Graduated from Washington State University with a B.S. in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics. Go Cougs!
• 06/2024: This summer, I will be conducting research at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the CMU RISS program.
• 09/2023: I will be participating in Google Research's CS Research Mentorship Program during the Fall semester.
• 07/2023: I am thrilled and sincerely grateful to have been awarded the Generation Google Scholarship.
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• 07/2023: My contributions to the work I completed at Oregon State University have been accepted for presentation at IROS 2023!
• 05/2023: I will be interning as a STEP Intern at Google.
• 05/2023: I became a MARC Scholar through the NIH Fellowship.
• 06/2022: I conducted research at Oregon State University as part of the REU: Robots in the Real World program.
• 07/2021: I became an ESTEEMED Scholar through the NIH Fellowship.

Research

I am interested in developing socially adaptive learning algorithms that enable robots to navigate and collaborate effectively in socially complex environments.

Spatial formations can give many social cues, such as illustrating a group of people are having a conversation (social affiliation), or that they are trying to move swiftly through a space (functional goal). This work explored how people perceive varied robots formations while navigating through a space and approaching people.

Design by Jon Barron.