Ethan Rathbun

PhD Student

Ethan Rathbun
  • BS in Computer Science, University of Connecticut 
  • BA in Mathematics, University of Connecticut 

Ethan Rathbun is a doctoral student in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston. He is advised by Alina Oprea and Chris Amato. 

As a member of both the Lab for Learning and Planning in Robotics and the Network and Distributed Systems Security Lab, Rathbun researches adversarial machine learning, reinforcement learning, and network security. He enjoys security research’s mix of theory and application, as well as the way reinforcement learning reflects a high level of long-term reasoning. He aims to develop more secure reinforcement learning algorithms, as their implementation is critical to safety in applications such as self-driving cars. 

Prior to joining Khoury College in 2023, Rathbun researched adversarial machine learning in the Secure Computing Lab at the University of Connecticut. Outside of academia, Rathbun is an avid rock climber who travels the country in search of exciting and challenging routes.