The "Elementary Particle Physics Laboratory" named in the past as "The Nuclear Structure Laboratory" was formed in 1963 in PNPI (at that time PNPI was a branch-institute of the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute). Up to 2002, this laboratory was headed by Prof. A.A.Vorobyov.
    The first investigations were devoted to study of ternary fission (at the PNPI nuclear reactor) and of proton-proton and proton-nucleus elastic scattering (at the PNPI 1 GeV proton accelerator). However, practically from the very beginning the activity of the laboratory was not limited to investigations at the PNPI basic facilities, but an active collaboration with other nuclear centres was carried out. In 1973, an intensive program on nuclear structure studies was started in collaboration with the Saclay (Saturn) laboratory. Then, experiments on small angle scattering of hadrons were performed at CERN using the recoil detector IKAR worked out at PNPI. Very fruitful investigations of the muon catalized dd- and dt- fusion were carried out at PNPI and at PSI (in collaboration with PNPI). (See Historical overview of main activities).
    At present, the Elementary Particle Physics Laboratory participates in several international projects carried out in the leading world scientific centres: L3, CMS, LHCb, ATLAS (CERN, Switzerland), SELEX, D0 (FNAL, USA), and some others (See Current Projects).