Related papers: A trust-region method for derivative-free nonlinea…
In this work, we propose the joint use of a mixed penalty-interior point method and direct search, for addressing nonlinearly constrained derivative-free optimization problems. A merit function is considered, wherein the set of nonlinear…
A parametric class of trust-region algorithms for constrained nonconvex optimization is analyzed, where the objective function is never computed. By defining appropriate first-order stationarity criteria, we are able to extend the Adagrad…
Stochastic Nonlinear Optimal Control (SNOC) seeks to minimize a cost function that accounts for random disturbances acting on a nonlinear dynamical system. Since the expectation over all disturbances is generally intractable, a common…
This work develops a stochastic model predictive controller~(SMPC) for uncertain linear systems with additive Gaussian noise subject to state and control constraints. The proposed approach is based on the recently developed finite-horizon…
For nonlinear equations, the homotopy methods (continuation methods) are popular in engineering fields since their convergence regions are large and they are quite reliable to find a solution. The disadvantage of the classical homotopy…
We consider trust-region methods for solving optimization problems where the objective is the sum of a smooth, nonconvex function and a nonsmooth, convex regularizer. We extend the global convergence theory of such methods to include…
We present a new framework for solving general topology optimization (TO) problems that find an optimal material distribution within a design space to maximize the performance of a structure while satisfying design constraints. These…
In this thesis, we propose new theoretical frameworks for the analysis of stochastic and distributed methods with error compensation and local updates. Using these frameworks, we develop more than 20 new optimization methods, including the…
The Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) has enjoyed increasing attention in noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing due to its application to combinatorial optimization problems. Because combinatorial optimization problems…
Topology optimization under uncertainty (TOuU) often defines objectives and constraints by statistical moments of geometric and physical quantities of interest. Most traditional TOuU methods use gradient-based optimization algorithms and…
Trust-region (TR) and adaptive regularization using cubics (ARC) have proven to have some very appealing theoretical properties for non-convex optimization by concurrently computing function value, gradient, and Hessian matrix to obtain the…
In this work, we present a globalized stochastic semismooth Newton method for solving stochastic optimization problems involving smooth nonconvex and nonsmooth convex terms in the objective function. We assume that only noisy gradient and…
Data-driven approaches to predict-then-optimize decision-making problems seek to mitigate the risk of uncertainty region misspecification in safety-critical settings. Current approaches, however, suffer from considering overly conservative…
In this paper, a novel stochastic extra-step quasi-Newton method is developed to solve a class of nonsmooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. We assume that the gradient of the smooth part of the objective function can only be…
We provide a novel computer-assisted technique for systematically analyzing first-order methods for optimization. In contrast with previous works, the approach is particularly suited for handling sublinear convergence rates and stochastic…
In many contemporary optimization problems such as those arising in machine learning, it can be computationally challenging or even infeasible to evaluate an entire function or its derivatives. This motivates the use of stochastic…
We study an extension of contextual stochastic linear optimization (CSLO) that, in contrast to most of the existing literature, involves inequality constraints that depend on uncertain parameters predicted by a machine learning model. To…
In this work, we consider solving optimization problems with a stochastic objective and deterministic equality constraints. We propose a Trust-Region Sequential Quadratic Programming method to find both first- and second-order stationary…
We investigate a data-driven approach to constructing uncertainty sets for robust optimization problems, where the uncertain problem parameters are modeled as random variables whose joint probability distribution is not known. Relying only…
Trust region and cubic regularization methods have demonstrated good performance in small scale non-convex optimization, showing the ability to escape from saddle points. Each iteration of these methods involves computation of gradient,…