Computer science is the study of how scientific and mathematical methods can be combined with computation and technology to solve problems that are important to society. What's more, computer scientists are uniquely capable of predicting the problems that will become relevant in the future, as well as proposing and implementing solutions to them. Computer science is applied now, more than ever, to a wide array of fields:

• Feature-film production and interactive video game development
• Medical imaging, analysis, and bioinformatics
• Managing large businesses and forecasting international financial systems
• All forms of human communication
• Cloud computing and web services
• Industrial robot control for automation
• 3D printing for in-house rapid prototyping and manufacturing systems
• Shape recognition from satellite and medical imagery
• Natural language processing, automatic language understanding and translation
• Scientific computation and virtual simulation of complex physical processes

Aside from its many applications, computer science benefits from a constantly evolving theoretical environment. For instance, researchers at the DIRO are actively working on devising the next generation of computers capable of leveraging quantum mechanics to accomplish tasks that are impractical to address with current technology.