On Oct. 13, FORE Systems University Professor of Computer Science Edmund M. Clarke received an honorary doctorate from the University of Crete’s Department of Computer Science — the first honorary degree ever awarded by the department.

The University of Crete is a multidisciplinary, research-oriented institution located in the cities of Rethymno and Heraklion on the island of Crete.  It is ranked 48th in the the Times Higher Education (THE) annual list of the top 100 universities founded in the past 50 years.

Christos Nikolaou, a Ph.D. student of Clarke’s at Harvard University, is a former rector and now heads the Computer Science Department’s Transformation Services Laboratory.

Clarke is known for his pivotal role in the development of model checking, a formal method for verifying the correctness of computer hardware and software design. For that achievement, he shared the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2007 Turing Award and, earlier this year, received the Franklin Institute’s prestigious Bower Award and Prize.