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Many nonconvex problems in robotics can be relaxed into convex formulations via Semi-Definite Programming (SDP) that can be solved to global optimality. The practical quality of these solutions, however, critically depends on rounding them…
This paper studies robust solutions and semidefinite linear programming (SDP) relaxations of a class of convex polynomial programs in the face of data uncertainty. The class of convex programs, called robust SOS-convex programs, includes…
Sparse estimation methods are aimed at using or obtaining parsimonious representations of data or models. They were first dedicated to linear variable selection but numerous extensions have now emerged such as structured sparsity or kernel…
This paper investigates the relation between sequential convex programming (SCP) as, e.g., defined in [24] and DC (difference of two convex functions) programming. We first present an SCP algorithm for solving nonlinear optimization…
Many problems of systems control theory boil down to solving polynomial equations, polynomial inequalities or polyomial differential equations. Recent advances in convex optimization and real algebraic geometry can be combined to generate…
For a large class of optimization problems, namely those that can be expressed as finite-valued constraint satisfaction problems (VCSPs), we establish a dichotomy on the number of levels of the Lasserre hierarchy of semi-definite programs…
We introduce a method for proving lower bounds on the efficacy of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations for combinatorial problems. In particular, we show that the cut, TSP, and stable set polytopes on $n$-vertex graphs are not the…
We consider the semi-infinite system of polynomial inequalities of the form \[ \mathbf{K}:=\{x\in\mathbb{R}^m\mid p(x,y)\ge 0,\ \ \forall y\in S\subseteq\mathbb{R}^n\}, \] where $p(x,y)$ is a real polynomial in the variables $x$ and the…
Vertex Subset Problems (VSPs) are a class of combinatorial optimization problems on graphs where the goal is to find a subset of vertices satisfying a predefined condition. Two prominent approaches for solving VSPs are dynamic programming…
Semidefinite programs (SDPs) are standard convex problems that are frequently found in control and optimization applications. Interior-point methods can solve SDPs in polynomial time up to arbitrary accuracy, but scale poorly as the size of…
In theory, hierarchies of semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations based on sum of squares (SOS) polynomials have been shown to provide arbitrarily close approximations for a general polynomial optimization problem (POP). However, due to…
Many high dimensional sparse learning problems are formulated as nonconvex optimization. A popular approach to solve these nonconvex optimization problems is through convex relaxations such as linear and semidefinite programming. In this…
This paper tackles the challenging problem of finding global optimal solutions for two-stage stochastic programs with continuous decision variables and nonconvex recourse functions. We introduce a two-phase approach. The first phase…
We study the maximization of sums of heterogeneous quadratic forms over the Stiefel manifold, a nonconvex problem that arises in several modern signal processing and machine learning applications such as heteroscedastic probabilistic…
Hyperbolic spaces have increasingly been recognized for their outstanding performance in handling data with inherent hierarchical structures compared to their Euclidean counterparts. However, learning in hyperbolic spaces poses significant…
We introduce an innovative numerical technique based on convex optimization to solve a range of infinite dimensional variational problems arising from the application of the background method to fluid flows. In contrast to most existing…
We use convex relaxation techniques to produce lower bounds on the optimal value of subset selection problems and generate good approximate solutions. We then explicitly bound the quality of these relaxations by studying the approximation…
The (constrained) minimization of a ratio of set functions is a problem frequently occurring in clustering and community detection. As these optimization problems are typically NP-hard, one uses convex or spectral relaxations in practice.…
Coordinate-wise minimization is a simple popular method for large-scale optimization. Unfortunately, for general (non-differentiable) convex problems it may not find global minima. We present a class of linear programs that coordinate-wise…
We present a method for finding lower bounds on the global infima of integral variational problems, wherein $\int_\Omega f(x,u(x),\nabla u(x)){\rm d}x$ is minimized over functions $u\colon\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n\to\mathbb{R}^m$ satisfying…