Another CSU Physics BS Graduate Earns a Ph.D. in Physics!

On April 16, 2026, Jacob Adamczyk ‘20 (BS Physics Honors/BS Math) successfully defended his Ph. D. thesis in Physics entitled“A Statistical Mechanics Approach to Reinforcement Learning” at the University of Massachusetts Boston in Boston Massachussetts (here is the link to his dissertation: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/doctoral_dissertations/1186/).Jacob’s academic career began at Lorain County Community College (LCCC) as a high school student, where he earned his Associate of Science before transferring to CSU as a physics and math major. Jacob recalls attending the weekly SPS events with excitement. Hearing about the department's research surrounded by like-minded students was quite inspiring to him. Later on, Jacob joined the SPS efforts by helping out with some events, including writing questions for Physics Jeopardy.

During his time at CSU, Jacob worked on various research projects in the physics department. Following an REU at CSU (2018), his primary research was with Dr. Streletzky on analysis of microgel experiments. His first publication came from work with Dr. Streletzky and (CSU alum) Dr. Krista Freeman. In summer of 2019, Jacob traveled to Grenoble, France to do experimental work on superconductivity at l'Institut Néel under Dr. Clemens Winkelmann. Back at CSU with Dr. Kaufman, he studied the statistical mechanics theory of microgels, and in his last year worked with Dr. Heus on the simulation of microphysics in atmospheric models before graduating in 2020.

At UMass Boston, Jacob researched the theory and algorithms of deep reinforcement learning (RL). Drawing on non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, his group developed physics-inspired approaches to compositionality, exploration, and the average-reward objective, among other topics, and he has co-authored 19 papers in this area. This work was recognized with awards from APS, including the 2024 and 2025 GDS IMPACT Award and the 2025 GSNP Student Speaker Award. Most recently, he gave an invited talk at the DSNP focus session for the 2026 Global Physics Summit. UMass Boston has awarded him the 2026 Benjamin Mollow Excellence in Graduate Research Award, the Graduate Student Leadership Award, and the Dean's Doctoral Research Fellowship. Over the past five years he has served as a reviewer on over 40 papers at the top venues in machine learning research. During this time, Jacob was a Junior Investigator at the NSF's Institute for AI and Fundamental Interactions, a national hub for cross-disciplinary research in AI and physics. In 2025 Jacob had an internship at Sony, where he extended his recent algorithms to their industry-scale systems. His dissertation developed a statistical mechanics theory of reinforcement learning, a new unifying framework for the field.

Please join us in congratulating Jacob on finishing his PhD and starting his work as a Postdoc at the University of Massachusetts Boston! Long Live Physics at CSU!