We are very happy to announce that follow HEAL member Erik Pitzer has successfully defended his PhD thesis last week and will be awarded the title Doctor Technicae from the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. Erik has been an active and esteemed HeuristicLab developer for many years, even before he officially joined our group. We want to use this opportunity to thank him for his valuable contributions to HeuristicLab persistence, the optimization knowledge base, simulation optimization and - of course - fitness landscape analysis. Erik's thesis on "Applied Fitness Landscape Analysis" was not just an isolated research topic but led to many cross-project collaborations within our group and with other universities. The whole team congratulates whole-heartedly to this success!