Christopher (Chris) Kalahiki is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Clemson University who joined the Human-AI Empowerment Lab in 2025, advised by Dr. Carlos Toxtli. As a graduate research assistant on the NSF SaTC 2.0 project Tracking the Usability of Secure Authentication Systems, Chris studies how people manage authentication in everyday life (HFES ASPIRE 2026). Chris's dissertation research examines trust in large language models for human-AI teaming, including a study of how novice programmers team with AI assistants when "vibe coding".
Chris's background is in machine learning and high-performance computing, with projects in computer vision, explainable machine learning, natural language processing, graph learning and AI for games, and a 2023 study of breast tumor morphologies in the Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal. Chris holds B.S. (2018) and M.S. (2020) degrees in Computer Science from Louisiana Tech University, where the master's thesis applied computer vision to inventory management systems, and previously worked as an associate consultant at Fenway Group.
@inproceedings{Barwulor2026Authentication,
title = {Authentication Routines Among College Students},
author = {Barwulor, Catherine and Kalahiki, Christopher and Sidnam-Mauch, E. and Toxtli-Hernandez, Carlos and Caine, Kelly},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (ASPIRE 2026)},
publisher = {SAGE Publications},
year = {2026},
note = {Poster; forthcoming},
url = {https://www.hfes.org/Events/ASPIRE-International-Annual-Meeting/ASPIRE-Home}
}
In the news
Three Ph.D. students join the lab in 2025: Austin LaHue (HCC), Fateme Mazdarani (CS) and Christopher Kalahiki (CS).
