Jonah Padawer-Curry began his research career as an undergraduate working on projects in high-energy physics and acoustic analysis. He then shifted into biomedical science, studying dosimetry of photodynamic therapy in pleural cavities, and later biophotonics using large-animal models of cardiac arrest, ECMO, and cardiopulmonary bypass. Jonah subsequently transitioned to wide-field optical imaging in mice, sparking his enduring interest in large-scale brain dynamics. In graduate school, he investigated (1) motor control through optogenetic perturbations, linking distributed neural activity to behavior, and (2) the effects of psychedelics on neurovascular coupling.

Taken together, these experiences have led Jonah to view the brain as a dynamical system, in which observable signals (e.g., calcium, hemodynamics) reflect latent organismal states. His current work explores models in which these latent states serve as generative mechanisms for the spatiotemporal evolution of spontaneous brain activity — with a particular interest in how this framework might help explain the apparent functional changes observed across development.