Related papers: Log Barriers for Safe Non-convex Black-box Optimiz…
In this paper some adaptive mirror descent algorithms for problems of minimization convex objective functional with several convex Lipschitz (generally, non-smooth) functional constraints are considered. It is shown that the methods are…
We study a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems in which the objective is a sum of two functions: One function is the average of a large number of differentiable functions, while the other function is proper, lower…
We consider Bayesian optimization of an expensive-to-evaluate black-box objective function, where we also have access to cheaper approximations of the objective. In general, such approximations arise in applications such as reinforcement…
In this paper, we study the problem of monotone (weakly) DR-submodular continuous maximization. While previous methods require the gradient information of the objective function, we propose a derivative-free algorithm LDGM for the first…
We consider the problem of maximizing a submodular function with access to a noisy value oracle for the function instead of an exact value oracle. Similar to prior work, we assume that the noisy oracle is persistent in that multiple calls…
In this paper, we study the fundamental open question of finding the optimal high-order algorithm for solving smooth convex minimization problems. Arjevani et al. (2019) established the lower bound $\Omega\left(\epsilon^{-2/(3p+1)}\right)$…
This paper presents a methodology for Practically Safe Extremum Seeking (PSfES), designed to optimize unknown objective functions while strictly enforcing safety constraints via a Logarithmic Barrier Function (LBF). Unlike traditional…
In this paper, we make the key delineation on the roles of resolution and statistical uncertainty in hierarchical bandits-based black-box optimization algorithms, guiding a more general analysis and a more efficient algorithm design. We…
We consider the task of minimizing the sum of smooth and strongly convex functions stored in a decentralized manner across the nodes of a communication network whose links are allowed to change in time. We solve two fundamental problems for…
In this paper we propose a convex Sum-of-Squares optimization problem for finding outer approximations of forward reachable sets for nonlinear uncertain Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE's) with either (or both) L2 or point-wise bounded…
This paper propose a new frame work for finding global minima which we call optimization by cut. In each iteration, it takes some samples from the feasible region and evaluates the objective function at these points. Based on the…
Black-box optimization is increasingly used in engineering design problems where simulation-based evaluations are costly and gradients are unavailable. In this context, the optimization community has largely analyzed algorithm performance…
A common problem encountered in many real-world applications is level set estimation where the goal is to determine the region in the function domain where the function is above or below a given threshold. When the function is black-box and…
In this work we consider unconstrained optimization problems. The objective function is known through a zeroth order stochastic oracle that gives an estimate of the true objective function. To solve these problems, we propose a…
Optimizing an experimental system can be extremely challenging when each experiment is expensive, time-consuming, or difficult to perform. Existing optimizers for expensive black-box problems, such as Bayesian optimization, are typically…
The paper deals with the problem of penalized empirical risk minimization over a convex set of linear functionals on the space of Hermitian matrices with convex loss and nuclear norm penalty. Such penalization is often used in low rank…
In this paper, we leverage an information-theoretic upper bound on the maximum admissible level of noise (MALN) in convex Lipschitz-continuous zeroth-order optimisation to establish corresponding upper bounds for classes of strongly convex…
We study the classical problem of approximating a non-decreasing function $f: \mathcal{X} \to \mathcal{Y}$ in $L^p(\mu)$ norm by sequentially querying its values, for known compact real intervals $\mathcal{X}$, $\mathcal{Y}$ and a known…
The problem of maximizing non-negative monotone submodular functions under a certain constraint has been intensively studied in the last decade. In this paper, we address the problem for functions defined over the integer lattice. Suppose…
Zeroth-order optimization methods are developed to overcome the practical hurdle of having knowledge of explicit derivatives. Instead, these schemes work with merely access to noisy functions evaluations. One of the predominant approaches…