Synchronous programming is mostly a French thing but as far as I know there is also Quartz in Germany (https://es.cs.uni-kl.de/publications/datarsg/Schn09.pdf), Ptolemy in Berkeley (http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/papers/01/sr/s...) and some work at Virginia Tech (https://theses.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-08112011-1613...).