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Saddle-point problems have recently gained increased attention from the machine learning community, mainly due to applications in training Generative Adversarial Networks using stochastic gradients. At the same time, in some applications…

Many neural networks deployed in the real world scenarios are trained using cross entropy based loss functions. From the optimization perspective, it is known that the behavior of first order methods such as gradient descent crucially…

In this paper, we study a class of deterministically constrained stochastic optimization problems. Existing methods typically aim to find an $\epsilon$-stochastic stationary point, where the expected violations of both constraints and…

We consider the problem of finding stationary points in Bilevel optimization when the lower-level problem is unconstrained and strongly convex. The problem has been extensively studied in recent years; the main technical challenge is to…

We study fundamental limits of first-order stochastic optimization in a range of nonconvex settings, including L-smooth functions satisfying Quasar-Convexity (QC), Quadratic Growth (QG), and Restricted Secant Inequalities (RSI). While the…

Classical stochastic gradient methods are well suited for minimizing expected-value objective functions. However, they do not apply to the minimization of a nonlinear function involving expected values or a composition of two expected-value…

In this paper we study convex bi-level optimization problems for which the inner level consists of minimization of the sum of smooth and nonsmooth functions. The outer level aims at minimizing a smooth and strongly convex function over the…

We consider a stochastic convex optimization problem that requires minimizing a sum of misspecified agentspecific expectation-valued convex functions over the intersection of a collection of agent-specific convex sets. This misspecification…

In this paper, we introduce a new heuristics for global optimization in scenarios where extensive evaluations of the cost function are expensive, inaccessible, or even prohibitive. The method, which we call Landscape-Sketch-and-Step (LSS),…

The total complexity (measured as the total number of gradient computations) of a stochastic first-order optimization algorithm that finds a first-order stationary point of a finite-sum smooth nonconvex objective function $F(w)=\frac{1}{n}…

This paper considers stochastic first-order algorithms for convex-concave minimax problems of the form $\min_{\bf x}\max_{\bf y}f(\bf x, \bf y)$, where $f$ can be presented by the average of $n$ individual components which are $L$-average…

We design an algorithm which finds an $\epsilon$-approximate stationary point (with $\|\nabla F(x)\|\le \epsilon$) using $O(\epsilon^{-3})$ stochastic gradient and Hessian-vector products, matching guarantees that were previously available…

It was recently established that for convex optimization problems with sparse optimal solutions (be it entry-wise sparsity or matrix rank-wise sparsity) it is possible to design first-order methods with linear convergence rates that depend…

We consider joint optimization and learning problems arising in real-time decision systems. While most existing work focuses primarily on convex, revenue-based objectives, we extend this line of research to multi-objective formulations. In…

This paper is devoted to the study of stochastic optimization problems under the generalized smoothness assumption. By considering the unbiased gradient oracle in Stochastic Gradient Descent, we provide strategies to achieve in bounds the…

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…

In this paper we introduce a class of novel distributed algorithms for solving stochastic big-data convex optimization problems over directed graphs. In the addressed set-up, the dimension of the decision variable can be extremely high and…

This paper proposes a constrained stochastic successive convex approximation (CSSCA) algorithm to find a stationary point for a general non-convex stochastic optimization problem, whose objective and constraint functions are non-convex and…

We lower bound the complexity of finding $\epsilon$-stationary points (with gradient norm at most $\epsilon$) using stochastic first-order methods. In a well-studied model where algorithms access smooth, potentially non-convex functions…

With the development of robotics, there are growing needs for real time motion planning. However, due to obstacles in the environment, the planning problem is highly non-convex, which makes it difficult to achieve real time computation…