Jonathan Winawer is a Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. He joined the NYU faculty in 2013. His research centers on visual science, including perception and visual encoding in the human nervous system. He is Director of Undergraduate Studies of the Department of Psychology. He was chair of the faculty committee for NYU’s Center for Brain Imaging from 2018 to 2023.
Educational background. Winawer graduated from Columbia University in 1995 with a B.A. in Classics. He subsequently earned an MS degree in neurobiology from the City University of New York’s City College campus, under the supervision of Josh Wallman, and then a PhD in Cognitive Science from MIT in 2007. After his Ph.D., he did a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychology at Stanford University with Brian Wandell, and then became a professor at New York University in 2013.
Research. Winawer’s laboratory seeks to understand the computations and circuits supporting visual perception in healthy human beings, and how deficiencies in these circuits contribute to disease. The laboratory has studied the organization of visual field maps in the human brain, has developed computational models that predict cortical responses across many parts of the visual system to a wide array of visual stimuli, and has measured brain and behavior in patients with visual deficits. Through a combination of modeling and empirical measurement, the lab has advanced understanding of how visual representations are transformed across different visual areas. The lab has also developed normative models and compared these to measurements of patients with visual deficits.
Toward these goals, Winawer’s lab makes significant use of several imaging instruments, including MRI, magnetoencephalography (MEG), electroencephalography (EEG), and intracranial EEG (ECoG, or electroencephalography) in patient volunteers. The research emphasizes coordinating measurements across the different modalities to derive a better understanding of how the cortical circuitry encodes visual information, and to further understanding of what aspect of the circuitry each instrument is sensitive to.
Throughout Winawer’s career, he has taken a broad view on the role of sensory systems in cognition, behavior, and disease. His early training was in physiological optics and the control of eye growth in myopia (Master’s Degree). His doctoral training was in cognitive neuroscience and the manner in which sensory systems support cognition. His postdoctoral work emphasized measurement and computational modeling of the cortical visual system. Each of these informs the current research in Winawer’s lab, in which he takes an integrated approach to understand human vision, spanning information processing in the eye, the cortical representation, and the relationship between visual circuitry and behavior.