Computers are a core part of our lives: social networking, media streaming, security, computer games, office applications and online shopping are all obvious examples of things that computer science has brought us that many people are very familiar with.

At its most fundamental level, computer science is about information: how to represent, store, communicate, manipulate, understand and make use of it.

Information is a tremendously valuable commodity, and there is a vast industry dedicated to making sense of it: from generating adverts specific to your interests on social networking sites, to identifying trends in financial markets. The role of the computer scientist in this process is not just about writing computer programs to perform a particular task (although this can be a significant part of what computer scientists do), it is about developing new ways of thinking about information, and what you can do with it. This can have a profound impact on other areas of science and engineering, and also humanities, social sciences and business.