Erik Chi

About

I’m a Computer Science Ph.D. student at the University of 〽️Michigan. I’m grateful to be advised by Prof. J. Alex Halderman. My research focuses on Security & Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) including: Network Security, Open Internet, and LLM privacy.

Previously, I did my undergrad in CS (Honors) & Math at UMich. I was fortunate to work on

Refraction Networking. I also spent a year at ByteDance working as a Recommendation & Natural Language Processing (NLP) Algorithm Intern before joining UMich. I started my undergrad at the University of 🦘Sydney, during which I also engaged in several research projects and a Research Internship in Graph-Processing Algorithms.

In my spare time, I build, vibe code, and THINK about privacy for AGI.

Twitter / LinkedIn / GitHub

Research & Papers

Just add WATER: WebAssembly-based Circumvention Transports
Erik Chi, Gaukas Wang, J. Alex Halderman, Eric Wustrow, Jack Wampler
FOCI 2024: The Free and Open Communications on the Internet
Presented at the online event of FOCI'24
Website / PDF / BibTeX / Code / Talk / Slides

Teaching

I enjoy teaching! I’m currently an Instructional Aide for the following courses at the University of Michigan:

EECS 475: Introduction to Cryptography (forth-year), 2023 - 2024
EECS 281: Data Structures and Algorithms (second-year core), 2022 - 2023

I have been a teaching assistant (academic tutor) for the following classes while an undergrad at USyd:

COMP2017 Operating System Programming (second-year core & grad-level), 2021 - 2022
COMP2123 Data Structures and Algorithms (second-year core & grad-level), 2021 (invited)
INFO1110 Introduction to Programming (first-year core & grad-level), 2021 - 2022

Professional Service

External Reviewer for IMC 2025: ACM Internet Measurement Conference
External Reviewer for IMC 2024: ACM Internet Measurement Conference

Experience

Center for Computer Security and Society, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Research Assistant (working on Refraction Networking), 2023 - present
CURLY, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI Research Assistant (worked on Hi-Fetch), 2022 - 2023
ByteDance, Beijing, China Recommendation System & NLP Algorithm Intern, 2020 - 2021
The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia Research Intern (worked on Cohesive Subgraph Computation), 2020

☕ Misc

In my free time, I love to play the violin or guitar, often while singing.
I love 🇳🇿New Zealand, where I did my high school.
Steve Jobs' speeches have been a significant source of inspiration for me. His words ignite a spark of ambition and drive in my journey. Sharing this in the hope that it might inspire others too! About life, About asking & failure, Stanford Commencement address.