---
title: "Curriculum Vitae — Mario Brcic, PhD"
author: "Mario Brcic"
author_url: "https://mariobrcic.com/about-me/"
canonical_url: "https://mariobrcic.com/cv/"
summary: "Strategy Engines, Cognitive Sovereignty, value alignment. Associate Professor at FER (University of Zagreb), Managing Partner at It From Bit."
license: "all-rights-reserved"
---
> *Canonical HTML version: [https://mariobrcic.com/cv/](https://mariobrcic.com/cv/). © Mario Brcic. All rights reserved.*

# Curriculum Vitae — Mario Brcic, PhD

Strategy Engines · Cognitive Sovereignty · Value Alignment. Associate Professor at FER (University of Zagreb). Managing Partner at It From Bit.

## Positioning

Originator of **Strategy Engines** — computational systems for principled, well-grounded, and auditable strategic moves on wicked, high-stakes problems. Author of the *Cognitive Sovereignty* trilogy on value alignment, strategy, and systems of power.

## Current positions

- **Associate Professor**, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER), University of Zagreb. Research on AI safety, decision intelligence, operations research, and the formal limits of strategic AI.
- **Managing Partner**, It From Bit — strategic advisory practice deploying Strategy Engines methods with executive teams and public-sector decision-makers.

## Research program

- **VALOR** — Value-aligned and Interpretable Optimization and Reasoning. FER institutional research project, 2025–2029. Mechanistic interpretability and value alignment of large language models. Themed under Civilian Security for Society. *Principal Investigator*.
- **EquiFlow** (completed) — Proof of Innovative Concept (NPOO / NextGenerationEU, FER). Large-scale urban-traffic coordination on specialised accelerator hardware. *Principal Investigator*.
- **AnomalyStudio** (completed) — Proof of Innovative Concept (NPOO / NextGenerationEU, via It From Bit). Automated, interpretable root-cause analysis of operational anomalies. *Principal Investigator*.
- Earlier EU-scale work: European Processor Initiative (EPI), National Competence Centres in EuroHPC (EuroCC), ESIF distributed-process monitoring research.

## Selected publications

3000+ citations. Full record on ORCID and Google Scholar.

For the live-rendered list with DOIs, see https://mariobrcic.com/publications/.

Highlights:

- Brcic, M., Yampolskiy, R. V. *Impossibility Results in AI: A Survey.* ACM Computing Surveys, 2023.
- *The Memory Wars: AI Memory, Network Effects, and the Geopolitics of Cognitive Sovereignty.* arXiv:2508.05867, 2025.

## Selected essays

- *The Memory Wars: Why AI's Sticky Feature Is a Sovereignty Issue* (2025) — companion to arXiv:2508.05867.
- *The Power Gambit (Part 1) — Shadow Sovereignty* (2024).
- *The Power Gambit (Part 2) — Alignment Frameworks: SEAL, REAIM, TUNE* (2024).
- *AI Policy: You Can Have Your Cake and Eat It Too* — FER's Policy on Appropriate Use of AI, adopted March 2025.

Full archive: https://mariobrcic.com/writing/

## Education

- **PhD, Computer Science.** Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, 2015. Thesis: *Proactive-reactive project scheduling with flexibility and quality requirements*.
- **MSc, Computer Science.** Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, 2008. Thesis: *Source code generator based on UML specifications*.

## Affiliations

IEEE · ACM · AAAI · INFORMS · Croatian Operational Research Society (CRORS) · AGI Society

## Verifiable identity

- **ORCID**: 0000-0002-7564-6805 — https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7564-6805
- **Google Scholar**: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=rTdMHv8AAAAJ
- **FER profile**: https://www.fer.unizg.hr/en/mario.brcic
- **Web**: https://mariobrcic.com

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