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This paper investigates the problems large-scale distributed composite convex optimization, with motivations from a broad range of applications, including multi-agent systems, federated learning, smart grids, wireless sensor networks,…
Distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problems are increasingly seen as a viable method to train machine learning models for improved model generalization. These min-max formulations, however, are more difficult to solve. We therefore…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have advanced the field of Combinatorial Optimization through automated heuristic generation. Instead of relying on manual design, this LLM-Driven Heuristic Design (LHD) process leverages LLMs to iteratively…
This thesis proposal makes the following technical contributions: (i) we provide a definition of the Dynamic Influence Maximization Under Uncertainty (or DIME) problem, which models the problem faced by homeless shelters accurately; (ii) we…
In the study of social networks, a fundamental problem is that of influence maximization (IM): How can we maximize the collective opinion of individuals in a network given constrained marketing resources? Traditionally, the IM problem has…
In this paper, we consider the classic stochastic (dynamic) knapsack problem, a fundamental mathematical model in revenue management, with general time-varying random demand. Our main goal is to study the optimal policies, which can be…
Influence Maximization Problem (IMP) is selecting a seed set of nodes in the social network to spread the influence as widely as possible. It has many applications in multiple domains, e.g., viral marketing is frequently used for new…
Social networks have been popular platforms for information propagation. An important use case is viral marketing: given a promotion budget, an advertiser can choose some influential users as the seed set and provide them free or discounted…
Online influence maximization aims to maximize the influence spread of a content in a social network with unknown network model by selecting a few seed nodes. Recent studies followed a non-adaptive setting, where the seed nodes are selected…
A typical viral marketing model identifies influential users in a social network to maximize a single product adoption assuming unlimited user attention, campaign budgets, and time. In reality, multiple products need campaigns, users have…
Influence maximization (IM) is a crucial optimization task related to analyzing complex networks in the real world, such as social networks, disease propagation networks, and marketing networks. Publications to date about the IM problem…
Influence Maximization (IM) aims to maximize the number of people that become aware of a product by finding the `best' set of `seed' users to initiate the product advertisement. Unlike prior arts on static social networks containing fixed…
This paper investigates group distributionally robust optimization (GDRO) with the goal of learning a model that performs well over $m$ different distributions. First, we formulate GDRO as a stochastic convex-concave saddle-point problem,…
Influence maximization (IM) is the problem of finding a seed vertex set which is expected to incur the maximum influence spread on a graph. It has various applications in practice such as devising an effective and efficient approach to…
A new method for stochastic control based on neural networks and using randomisation of discrete random variables is proposed and applied to optimal stopping time problems. The method models directly the policy and does not need the…
Influence maximization (IM) has garnered a lot of attention in the literature owing to applications such as viral marketing and infection containment. It aims to select a small number of seed users to adopt an item such that adoption…
Influence maximization is the problem of finding a set of influential users in a social network such that the expected spread of influence under a certain propagation model is maximized. Much of the previous work has neglected the important…
Uncertainty about models and data is ubiquitous in the computational social sciences, and it creates a need for robust social network algorithms, which can simultaneously provide guarantees across a spectrum of models and parameter…
This paper considers optimal control of dynamical systems which are represented by nonlinear stochastic differential equations. It is well-known that the optimal control policy for this problem can be obtained as a function of a value…
In recent years, social networking platforms have gained significant popularity among the masses like connecting with people and propagating ones thoughts and opinions. This has opened the door to user-specific advertisements and…