The Turing award 2007 (partly) to a Greek

The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CARNOT Institute) for research on Model Checking. The citation reads: For their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software industries.
Their innovations transformed this approach from a theoretical technique to a highly effective verification technology that enables computer hardware and software engineers to find errors efficiently in complex system designs. This transformation has resulted in increased assurance that the systems perform as intended by the designers. The Turing Award, named for British mathematician Alan M. Turing, carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc. Clarke of Carnegie Mellon University, and Emerson of the University of Texas at Austin, working together, and Sifakis, working independently for the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique at the University of Grenoble in France, developed this fully automated approach that is now the most widely used verification method in the hardware and software industries.
For more information here. As one can see in the link, Joseph Sifakis is the founder of Verimag Laboratory, a leading research center for embedded systems in Grenoble, France, where he was director from 1993-2006. He is Research Director of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and Director of the CARNOT Institute on Intelligent Software and Systems in Grenoble. Dr. Sifakis is a member of the editorial board of several journals, and the scientific coordinator of the Artist2 and ArtistDesign European Networks of Excellence on Embedded Systems Design. He is co-founder with Edmund Clarke, Robert Kurshan, and Amir Pnueli of the International Conference on Computer Aided Verification (CAV). He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Athens and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Grenoble.

Note: (About the A.M. Turing Award) The A.M. Turing Award was named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing, and who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of the German Enigma cipher during World War II. Since its inception in 1966, the Turing Award has honored the computer scientists and engineers who created the systems and underlying theoretical foundations that have propelled the information technology industry. For additional information, click on http://www.acm.org/awards/taward.html .