The Sector (Laboratory) for Problems in Theoretical Biophysics was founded within the Theory Department of the
Lebedev Physics Institute in 1972 on the initiative of D.S.Chernavsky, with the support of the head of the Department,
Academician V.L.Ginzburg. Chernavsky then headed the Sector, which was first engaged in research of self-organization
in biological systems: the problem of the emergence of biological rhythms, the study of possible mechanisms of biological
morphogenesis, and the mechanism of functioning of enzymes. Subsequently, the field of study expanded and went beyond the
exclusively biological subjects. In 2015, the Sector was transformed into the Laboratory for Nonlinear Dynamics and
Theoretical Biophysics.
The main avenues of the current activities of the Laboratory comprise the study of the formation mechanisms of space-time
tructures in nonlinear dissipative dynamical systems. In particular, the subjects of recent theoretical research in the
Laboratory included complex spatiotemporal regimes experimentally observed in chemical reactions, such as the
Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction; the propagating combustion front; the growth and progression of a malignant tumor
interacting with surrounding tissues and blood vessels; complex self-oscillatory modes, including dynamical chaos,
in ensembles of coupled oscillators; and chimera states occurring in neural networks
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