acknowledgement.tex

%acknowledgement

\chapter*{Acknowledgements}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgements}

With the conclusion of this thesis another chapter of my life is coming to an
end, and there are many people who supported me in one way or another along my
path and I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of them.

First and foremost, I have to thank my supervisor Peter for all the support and
assistance he gave me during the four years I spent as a member of his research
group. The selection of research projects and the way he directed me towards the
interesting questions that needed to be answered were both excellent. I would
also like to thank Elke for taking on co-supervision and always helping me with
any questions I had.

My time in the Schwerdtfeger group has been filled with countless great
memories, all due to the people that I shared our premises with. Lukas\_0,
Lukas\_1 and Jayson were always available for a competitive round of table
tennis and helped me tremendously with all kinds of scientific questions and
problems. I want to thank Lukas\_0, Jayson, Paul and Morten specifically for
being great office mates and for all the interesting and fruitful discussions we
had. Furthermore, thanks for all the conversations about ``crypto'' and stock
markets to Antony and for all the discussions about writing a good PhD thesis
and life in general to Odile. A special thanks goes out to Vesna for keeping the
group up and running in the first place.

I am very grateful for all the moral and financial support I received from my
parents, my grandparents and my brother. The certainty that there was always
someone  who would stand by me no matter what happened contributed immensely to
the way I was able to approach this degree. Although, there were around 18,000
km and probably ten time zones separating us, Susi was always ready for a phone
call when I needed it, and I'm very grateful to have her as a friend. I also
wish to thank Emma and Victor for helping me to stay active and for being
amazing friends and climbing buddies. 

And last but not least, I would like to thank Bali for making my last couple of
months a little bit more special. Helping me to take my mind of all the work
that was lying ahead of me made finishing this thesis just so much easier.