Computers play an increasingly central role in all aspects of industry, education and everyday life. Over the past 40 years computer science has matured into a mainstream academic discipline. It covers a large number of areas such as software engineering, programming languages, software modelling and design, communications and networking technologies, formal methods, computer architectures, data warehousing, distributed systems, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. Applications cover most areas of human activity, from telecommunications to financial services and from engineering to e-commerce and e-business.