In memoriam: Manuel Villén-Altamirano (1948-2021)

Just after RESIM2021 was over, the sad news reached us that Manuel Villén-Altamirano had passed away a few weeks earlier, after a long hospitalization because of Covid-19.

In the rare-event simulation community, Manuel is best known for the RESTART method. Together with his brother José, he started developing this method while working at Telefónica in the late 1980s, for estimating very small packet loss probabilities in communication networks.

After retiring from Telefónica in 2008, he continued working on RESTART while persuing a PhD at the Technical University of Madrid, and since 2012 he was a senior researcher at the University of Málaga.

Manuel frequently attended and contributed to the RESIM workshops; he was a member of the steering committee, and (co)organized the 2002 edition in Madrid.