\chapter*{Acknowledgements}\label{acknowledgements}
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Mark Utting for the useful comments, remarks and engagement
for the duration of this thesis.
Furthermore, I would like to thank the Waikato Symphony administrators and NeSI Pan Cluster support team who
assisted me during the final benchmark experiments. I would like to thank my family and my friends, who have supported
me throughout the entire process by cheering me up all the time.

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