First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude towards my advisor Prof. Dr. Sebastian Hack. Not only did he give me the opportunity to pursue a PhD in his group, he also gave me all the necessary freedom, boundaries, and advice to finally succeed. Furthermore, I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Reinhard Wilhelm for reviewing this thesis, and Prof. Dr. Christoph Weidenbach and Dr. Jörg Herter for serving on my committee. I also want to offer my special thanks to Prof. Dr. Philipp Slusallek. He first introduced me to working in research during my undergraduate studies and since then has accompanied-with his typical, contagious enthusiasm-most of the projects that I have been involved in. Another special thanks go to Dr. Ayal Zaks for a lot of valuable feedback and for the honor of writing the foreword. It is a pleasure to thank the following people that I met during my time at university: