Expose current user as context/pass current user as argument into panel

I want to expose the current user as a context, i.e. automatically pass the current user as an argument into a panel so that it can be passed from there into my respective views. I've searched everywhere I could think of, but am unable to find any solution to my problem. Am I missing something simple?

Please note: I'm NOT trying to limit access to panels/variants, but even if I did want to, this still would not solve my problem of passing the current user as an argument into a panel.

I tried using combinations of 'me' alias, URL alias and a manual menu entry (after temporarily hacking out the menu validation) to 'path/me' (where the panel path is 'path/%user') but I get a "Page not found." error.

The closest I've come to a solution is using PHP to pass an argument into the views referenced by the panel, but this is clumsy (it corrects the problem downstream and kind of defeats the purpose of having contexts in the first place) and does not work for all my panes/views. Furthermore it requires significant duplication of some views AND panels, seeing as I want to be able to pass ANY user (incl. the current one) as an argument into a view. If I use the PHP argument method, I would need to duplicate all these views (have one with a normal argument and one where the argument is automatically passed) and have seoarate panel variants. Like I said: that kind of defeats the point of having contexts.

I've noticed that "logged in user" is exposed in the Access subsystem, but not in the Context subsystem. Would it be easy to port? Alternatively, what about allowing PHP-arguments in panels?

Does anyone have any advice? I desperately need this feature and have all but given up. This is quite a significant absent feature IMHO.