Christopher
Flathmann
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Academic work

Research on AI
and working together.

I study how AI changes communication, trust, and coordination, then use that understanding to build systems and train teams.

Academic CV PDFBIG CAT Research Group

Research support

Funding and roles.

My funded research explores how human–AI teams stay coordinated when the work changes or something goes wrong. That includes adaptive autonomy, maintaining shared knowledge, managing conflict, and protecting teams from failures and adversarial influence. I’ve also worked on teaming in underwater environments and AI-supported aviation inspection.

Support has come from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Army Research Laboratory (ARL), Office of Naval Research (ONR), and National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as U.S. Air Force research through a Mile2 subcontract. The shared-world-models project is funded by ARL through a University of Tennessee, Knoxville subcontract. The records below give my role and allocation for each award.

$7.88MTotal awards across grants and gifts
$1.56MPI project funding credited in my CV
$2.88MMy allocation at Clemson

Total project awards include funding shared with collaborators. My credited allocation and role are listed separately for each active award. Summary figures follow the funding summary in my CV. The ARL shared-world-models award is $2.08M overall, with $816,211 awarded to Clemson under my sole-PI role.

Active External Awards9
  • 2026 - Formation, Drift, and Reconciliation of Shared World Models in Human-AI Teams Under Degraded Information Environments. ARL, subcontract through the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. $2,077,811 total award; Clemson University portion: $816,211. Clemson University sole PI (100%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $816,211.
  • 2026 - An Offensive and Defensive Strategy to Human-AI Teaming: Addressing the Impacts of Failure and Adversarial Influence to Bolster Human-AI Team Resilience. AFOSR. $828,672. Co-PI (30%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $248,601.
  • 2025 - Enhancing Bidirectional Adaptive Autonomy to Improve the Situation Awareness and Shared Understanding of Human-Autonomy Teams. ARL. $754,300. Co-PI (35%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $264,005.
  • 2025 - Leveraging Autonomous and Human Teammates to Manage Conflict in Human-Autonomy Teams, Ensuring Trust, Team Cohesion, and Resilience. AFOSR. $390,222. PI (100%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $390,222.
  • 2025 - Project Rainfly: Exploring Offensive Attack Vectors in Human-AI Teams. Mile2 Subcontract for U.S. Air Force. $349,938. PI (65%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $227,459.
  • 2024 - Leveraging Adaptive Autonomous Teammates to Enable Resilience and Situational Awareness in Human-Autonomy Teams. ARL. $212,718. Co-PI (45%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $95,723.
  • 2023 - Minimizing the Impact of Cognitive and Physical Limitations from Humans and Autonomy Through the Development, Training, and Implementation of Human-Autonomy Teaming in Underwater Environments. ONR. $1,095,901. Co-PI (30%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $328,770.
  • 2023 - Collaborative Research: FW-HTF-RL: The Future of Aviation Inspection: Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality as Agents of Transformation. NSF. $1,558,433. Senior Personnel (17%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $264,933.
  • 2023 - Synchronizing Collaborations for Human-Autonomy Teaming and Ethical Autonomy Use. AFOSR DURIP. $612,389. Co-PI (40%). Flathmann funding based on percentage credit: $244,955.
Development and Writing Support4

Additional funded efforts where I contributed to proposal development and writing.

  • 2021 - The Spread of Trust and Distrust in Distributed Human-Autonomy Teaming Constellations. AFOSR. $1,302,657.
  • 2021 - Connecting and Leveraging Physical and Digital Dimensions to Advance Human-Autonomy Teaming. ONR DURIP. $295,792.
  • 2020 - Promoting Human Interpretation and Interaction to Mitigate Bias in Artificial Intelligence Assisted Decision Aids. ONR. $444,368.
  • 2020 - Considerations of Ethical and Unethical Behavior on Trust in Human-Autonomy Teaming. AFOSR. $586,538.

Publications.

For a full list of my publications, see my CV (PDF).

Courses + materials

Teaching.

HCC 3030 / AI Integrations13 decks

Human-centered AI in disciplinary contexts. These lecture decks open as presentations in your browser.

  1. Week 01Human-Centered AI
  2. Week 02Mapping the AI Field
  3. Week 03Human-AI Interaction
  4. Week 04Fairness, Bias, and Evaluation
  5. Week 05Data, Privacy, and Contestability
  6. Week 06AI in Healthcare
  7. Week 07AI in Education
  8. Week 08AI, Agriculture, and Closed-Loop Systems
  9. Week 09Generative Systems and Creativity
  10. Week 10AI and Global Development
  11. Week 11AI, Energy, and Planetary Systems
  12. Week 12AI, Work, and Labor
  13. Week 13Far-Future AI and Futures Literacy
HCC 8600 / Human-AI CollaborationGraduate

Applications of Human-AI Interaction, Collaboration, and Teaming

Graduate coursework on how people and AI work together.