Nonlinear dynamics: challenges and perspectives

The study of nonlinear dynamics has been an active area of research since 1960s, after certain path-breaking discoveries, leading to the concepts of solitons, integrability, bifurcations, chaos and spatio-temporal patterns, to name a few. Several new techniques and methods have been developed to understand nonlinear systems at different levels. Along with these, a multitude of potential applications of nonlinear dynamics have also been enunciated. In spite of these developments, several challenges, some of them fundamental and others on the efficacy of these methods in developing cutting edge technologies, remain to be tackled. In this article, a brief personal perspective of these issues is presented