Originally from the small Balkan country of Montenegro, Strahinja (Strajo) Janjusevic says his life has unfolded in unexpected ways, for which he’s deeply grateful. After graduating from highschool, he was chosen to represent his country in the USA, studying cyber operations and computer science on the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He has since continued his cybersecurity studies and is currently a second-year master’s student within the Technology and Policy Program (TPP), hosted by the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). His research with the MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the MIT Maritime Consortium team goals to enhance the cybersecurity of critical maritime infrastructure using artificial intelligence, considering each the technology and policy frameworks of solutions.
“My current research focuses on applying AI techniques to cybersecurity problems and examining the policy implications of those advancements, especially within the context of maritime cybersecurity,” says Janjusevic. “Representing my country at the best levels of education and industry has given me a novel perspective on cybersecurity challenges.”
Janjusevic’s pathway from Montenegro to Maryland was created by a program that enables chosen students from allied countries to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Janjusevic graduated with a dual bachelor’s degree in cyber operations and computer science. His undergraduate experience provided opportunities to collaborate with the U.S. military and the National Security Agency, exposing him to high-level cybersecurity operations and fueling his interest in tackling complex cybersecurity challenges. During his undergraduate studies, he also interned with Microsoft, developing tools for cloud incident response, and with NASA, visualizing solar data for research applications.
Following his graduation, he realized that he still needed more knowledge, particularly in the realm of AI and cybersecurity. TPP appealed to him immediately due to its dual emphasis on rigorous engineering innovation and the policy evaluation needed to deploy it effectively. Janjusevic’s experiences at TPP have been a giant change from his time on the U.S. Naval Academy, with a unique pace and environment. He has especially appreciated having the ability to broaden his understanding about a wide range of research domains and apply the discipline and knowledge he earned during his time on the academy.
“My TPP experience has been amazing,” says Janjusevic. “The cohort is actually small, so it looks like a family, and everyone seems to be working on diverse, high-impact problems.”
Mitigating the risks of emerging technologies
Janjusevic’s thesis brings together disciplines of cybersecurity, AI and deep learning, and control theory and physics, specializing in securing maritime cyber-physical systems — particularly, large legacy ships. The hacking of those ships’ networks can lead to substantial damage to national security, in addition to serious economic effects.
“Strajo is working to outsmart maritime GPS spoofing,” says Saurabh Amin, the Edmund K. Turner Professor in Civil Engineering. “Such attacks have already lured vessels astray in contested waters. His approach layers physics-based trajectory models with deep learning, catching threats that no single method can detect alone. His expertise has been very helpful in advancing our work on threat modeling and attack detection.”
The research utilizes advanced threat modeling and vessel dynamics to coach AI systems to differentiate between legitimate maneuvers and spoofed signals. It involves constructing a framework that employs an internal LSTM (long short-term memory) autoencoder to research signal integrity, while concurrently using a physics-based forecaster to predict the vessel’s movement based on environmental aspects like wind and the ocean state. By comparing these predictions against reported GPS positions, the system can effectively distinguish between natural sensor noise and malicious spoofing attacks. This hybrid framework is designed to empower, not replace, human operators, providing verified navigation data that enables watch standers to differentiate technical glitches from strategic cyberattacks.
Sanjusevic has been in a position to enhance his academic research with industry experience. In summer 2025, he interned with the Network Detection team on the AI cybersecurity company Vectra AI. There, he investigated potential threats recent technologies can bring, particularly AI agents and the model context protocol (MCP) — the emerging standard for AI agent communication. His research demonstrated how this technology could possibly be repurposed for autonomous hacking operations and advanced command and control. This work on the safety risks of agentic AI was recently presented within the preprint, “Hiding within the AI Traffic: Abusing MCP for LLM-Powered Agentic Red Teaming.”
“I used to be in a position to gain practical insights and hands-on experience into how an information science team uses AI models to detect anomalies in a network,” says Janjusevic. “This work inside industry directly informed the anomaly detection models in my research.”
International policy perspective
“Strajo brings not only a high level of intelligence and energy to his work on cyber-physical security for merchant vessels, but additionally a powerful instinct from his Navy training that resonates deeply with the research effort and grounds it in actionable policy,” says Fotini Christia, the Ford International 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, industry, and regulatory agencies focused on developing technological solutions, industry standards, and policies. The consortium includes cooperation with some international members, including from Singapore and South Korea.
“In AI cybersecurity, the policy element is actually essential, as the sector is so fast-moving and the implications of hacking may be so dangerous,” says Janjusevic. “I feel there’s still plenty of need for policy work on this space.”
Janjusevic can be currently helping to prepare two upcoming major conferences: the Harvard European Conference in February, which is able to convene officials and diplomats from across the globe, and the Technology and National Security Conference in April, a collaboration of Harvard and MIT that brings together top leaders from government, industry, and academia to tackle critical challenges in national security.
“I’m striving to search out a position where I can influence and advance the cybersecurity field with AI, while at the identical time leading collaboration and innovation between the USA and Montenegro,” says Janjusevic. “My goal is to be a bridge between Europe and the U.S. on this space of national security, AI, and cybersecurity, bringing my knowledge to each side.”
