For someone who's about to finish four years of studying physics and move to Indonesia to work with local banks, Jeremy B. Tobacman '99 seems surprisingly unfazed by graduation.

"It doesn't feel real because afterwards I don't think that my life is going to change that much," says the senior from Iowa City, Iowa, who recently received a Rockefeller Fellowship to support a year in Southeast Asia.

Indeed, Tobacman may be switching from quantum mechanics to community banking and moving from Eliot House to Indonesia, but he won't be going through any drastic changes.

Over the past four years Tobacman studied physics while spending his spare time working in homeless shelters and doing research for a professor in the economics department. Though a seemingly eclectic college career, it is one that flows naturally into his work in Indonesia.

Since the summer after his first year, Tobacman has worked with Sack Associate Professor of Political Economy David I. Laibson.

He began by summarizing journal articles and eventually worked with Laibson to plan and develop a computer program that simulates the economic behavior of populations.

Tobacman says this interest in understanding economic behavior is one of the reasons he is heading to Indonesia. He plans to spend at least part of his year studying a group of banks that is particularly responsive to its community and demonstrates an excellent knowledge of community behavior patterns.

Tobacman plans to enter graduate school in economics when he returns from Indonesia. He currently has offers from Harvard, Stanford, MIT and the University of Chicago.

But academic research and coursework were not Tobacman's only priorities during the last four years.

During his time at Harvard, Tobacman spent two summers working at the St. James Homeless Shelter in Cambridge and many spare hours during the academic year working at the University Lutheran Homeless Shelter. The experience seems to have had a profound impact on his thinking.

"My time there gave me insight into how vivid everybody's story is," he says. "Sometimes we forget the different kinds of things that can lead people to a point in life. We judge just based on what we observe."

So far, Tobacman's only concrete plans for next year involve his work studying banks. Still, there is every indication that his altruistic instincts will help shape his year in Indonesia.

"I am dedicated to doing something that really matters to the people there," he says. "I certainly want to make sure that while I'm there I'm not just in an office."

Moreover, it seems that Jeremy Tobacman the public servant has a strong influence on the choices being made by Jeremy Tobacman the academic.

Explaining why he wants to leave physics for a career in economics, Tobacman says, "I think economics as an academic discipline more adequately addresses problems that matter on a daily basis than physics."