In this talk, I will discuss several examples, drawn from our ongoing studies in worm, fruit fly and ascidian embryos, in which strong coupling between biochemical signaling, force generation and transmission leads to complex emergent spatiotemporal dynamics. At the cellular scale, I will focus on spatiotemporal dynamics of pulsed contractility, and dynamic stabilization of cell polarity in one-cell C. elegans embryos. At the tissue scale, I will highlight two examples in which mechanochemical coupling drives waves of morphogenesis across a sheet of epithelial cells. My goal is to highlight My goal is to highlight a class of problems that could really benefit from development of new mathematical and computational tools.