10 Acknowledgments

While many people were important for this habilitation document, three people come to mind in particular. First of all Tobias Friedrich, who had my back for many years, providing an outstanding work environment for me to thrive. Most inspirational for my development as a researcher was Benjamin Doerr, who acted as a mentor while pretending to be merely a collaborator; I learned a lot from Benjamin and enjoyed our many projects together. Furthermore, Martin Krejca was my PhD student and we had many fruitful collaborations; now he is a good friend, an impeccable discussion partner and generally a person I can rely on in many situations.
The community of researchers working on the Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics gave me a home as a scientist. The reviewing is thorough, the discussions interesting and the atmosphere very friendly. I want to point out particularly Carsten Witt, Carola Doerr, Johannes Lengler and Dirk Sudholt (all are also collaborators), but many other people are also significant for the community.
Finally, many researchers from the research group I am in contributed to this thesis either with discussions or by reading and commenting on drafts. In no particular order, “thank you” to Anton Krohmer, Marcus Pappik, Nicolas Klodt, Aishwarya Radhakrishnan, Xiaoyue Sherry Li, Nadym Mallek, Stefan Neubert, Janosch Ruff, Ziena Zeif and Sam Baguley.