Initially from the small Balkan nation of Montenegro, Strahinja (Strajo) Janjusevic says his life has unfolded in surprising methods, for which he’s deeply grateful. After graduating from highschool, he was chosen to characterize his nation in the US, learning cyber operations and laptop science on the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He has since continued his cybersecurity research and is presently a second-year grasp’s pupil within the Technology and Policy Program (TPP), hosted by the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). His analysis with the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the MIT Maritime Consortium staff goals to enhance the cybersecurity of essential maritime infrastructure utilizing synthetic intelligence, contemplating each the expertise and coverage frameworks of options.
“My present analysis focuses on making use of AI strategies to cybersecurity issues and analyzing the coverage implications of those developments, particularly within the context of maritime cybersecurity,” says Janjusevic. “Representing my nation on the highest ranges of schooling and trade has given me a novel perspective on cybersecurity challenges.”
Janjusevic’s pathway from Montenegro to Maryland was created by a program that permits chosen college students from allied international locations to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Janjusevic graduated with a twin bachelor’s diploma in cyber operations and laptop science. His undergraduate expertise offered alternatives to collaborate with the U.S. navy and the Nationwide Safety Company, exposing him to high-level cybersecurity operations and fueling his curiosity in tackling complicated cybersecurity challenges. Throughout his undergraduate research, he additionally interned with Microsoft, growing instruments for cloud incident response, and with NASA, visualizing photo voltaic knowledge for analysis functions.
Following his commencement, he realized that he nonetheless wanted extra information, significantly within the space of AI and cybersecurity. TPP appealed to him instantly due to its twin emphasis on rigorous engineering innovation and the coverage evaluation wanted to deploy it successfully. Janjusevic’s experiences at TPP have been a giant change from his time on the U.S. Naval Academy, with a unique tempo and atmosphere. He has particularly appreciated with the ability to broaden his understanding about a wide range of analysis domains and apply the self-discipline and information he earned throughout his time on the academy.
“My TPP expertise has been wonderful,” says Janjusevic. “The cohort is absolutely small, so it seems like a household, and everyone seems to be engaged on various, high-impact issues.”
Mitigating the dangers of rising applied sciences
Janjusevic’s thesis brings collectively disciplines of cybersecurity, AI and deep studying, and management concept and physics, specializing in securing maritime cyber-physical methods — particularly, massive legacy ships. The hacking of those ships’ networks may end up in substantial injury to nationwide safety, in addition to critical financial results.
“Strajo is working to outsmart maritime GPS spoofing,” says Saurabh Amin, the Edmund Ok. Turner Professor in Civil Engineering. “Such assaults have already lured vessels off beam in contested waters. His method layers physics-based trajectory fashions with deep studying, catching threats that no single methodology can detect alone. His experience has been very useful in advancing our work on risk modeling and assault detection.”
The analysis makes use of superior risk modeling and vessel dynamics to coach AI methods to differentiate between professional maneuvers and spoofed alerts. It includes constructing a framework that employs an inside LSTM (lengthy short-term reminiscence) autoencoder to research sign integrity, whereas concurrently utilizing a physics-based forecaster to foretell the vessel’s motion based mostly on environmental elements like wind and the ocean state. By evaluating these predictions towards reported GPS positions, the system can successfully distinguish between pure sensor noise and malicious spoofing assaults. This hybrid framework is designed to empower, not change, human operators, offering verified navigation knowledge that permits watch standers to differentiate technical glitches from strategic cyberattacks.
Sanjusevic has been in a position to improve his tutorial analysis with trade expertise. In summer season 2025, he interned with the Community Detection staff on the AI cybersecurity firm Vectra AI. There, he investigated potential threats new applied sciences can carry, significantly AI brokers and the mannequin context protocol (MCP) — the rising normal for AI agent communication. His analysis demonstrated how this expertise might be repurposed for autonomous hacking operations and superior command and management. This work on the safety dangers of agentic AI was not too long ago introduced within the preprint, “Hiding in the AI Traffic: Abusing MCP for LLM-Powered Agentic Red Teaming.”
“I used to be in a position to acquire sensible insights and hands-on expertise into how a knowledge science staff makes use of AI fashions to detect anomalies in a community,” says Janjusevic. “This work inside trade straight knowledgeable the anomaly detection fashions in my analysis.”
Worldwide coverage perspective
“Strajo brings not only a excessive degree of intelligence and power to his work on cyber-physical safety for service provider vessels, but in addition a powerful intuition from his Navy coaching that resonates deeply with the analysis effort and grounds it in actionable coverage,” says Fotini Christia, the Ford Worldwide Professor of the Social Sciences, director of IDSS and the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, and a frontrunner of the MIT Maritime Consortium.
Janjusevic participates within the cybersecurity efforts of the Maritime Consortium, a collaboration between academia, trade, and regulatory businesses centered on growing technological options, trade requirements, and insurance policies. The consortium contains cooperation with some worldwide members, together with from Singapore and South Korea.
“In AI cybersecurity, the coverage component is absolutely vital, as the sphere is so fast-moving and the results of hacking may be so harmful,” says Janjusevic. “I feel there’s nonetheless a whole lot of want for coverage work on this house.”
Janjusevic can be presently serving to to prepare two upcoming main conferences: the Harvard European Conference in February, which can convene officers and diplomats from throughout the globe, and the Technology and National Security Conference in April, a collaboration of Harvard and MIT that brings collectively prime leaders from authorities, trade, and academia to deal with essential challenges in nationwide safety.
“I’m striving to discover a place the place I can affect and advance the cybersecurity discipline with AI, whereas on the identical time main collaboration and innovation between the US and Montenegro,” says Janjusevic. “My aim is to be a bridge between Europe and the U.S. on this house of nationwide safety, AI, and cybersecurity, bringing my information to either side.”
