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Many inverse problems and signal processing problems involve low-rank regularizers based on the nuclear norm. Commonly, proximal gradient methods (PGM) are adopted to solve this type of non-smooth problems as they can offer fast and…
We study the problem of constrained efficient global optimization, where both the objective and constraints are expensive black-box functions that can be learned with Gaussian processes. We propose CONFIG (CONstrained efFIcient Global…
Bayesian optimization (BO) is a widely used iterative black-box optimization method that utilizes Gaussian process (GP) surrogate models. In practice, BO is typically terminated after a fixed evaluation budget is exhausted, which can incur…
Popular safe Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithms learn control policies for safety-critical systems in unknown environments. However, most algorithms make a smoothness assumption, which is encoded by a known bounded norm in a reproducing…
In the regret-based formulation of Multi-armed Bandit (MAB) problems, except in rare instances, much of the literature focuses on arms with i.i.d. rewards. In this paper, we consider the problem of obtaining regret guarantees for MAB…
Bayesian optimization (BO) with Gaussian process (GP) surrogate models is a powerful black-box optimization method. Acquisition functions are a critical part of a BO algorithm as they determine how the new samples are selected. Some of the…
Bayesian optimization is a framework for global search via maximum a posteriori updates rather than simulated annealing, and has gained prominence for decision-making under uncertainty. In this work, we cast Bayesian optimization as a…
I present the first algorithm for stochastic finite-armed bandits that simultaneously enjoys order-optimal problem-dependent regret and worst-case regret. Besides the theoretical results, the new algorithm is simple, efficient and…
We study a widely used Bayesian optimization method, Gaussian process Thompson sampling (GP-TS), under the assumption that the objective function is a sample path from a GP. Compared with the GP upper confidence bound (GP-UCB) with…
We study the stochastic contextual bandit problem, where the reward is generated from an unknown function with additive noise. No assumption is made about the reward function other than boundedness. We propose a new algorithm, NeuralUCB,…
Most algorithms for the multi-armed bandit problem in reinforcement learning aimed to maximize the expected reward, which are thus useful in searching the optimized candidate with the highest reward (function value) for diverse applications…
Recent studies have shown that reinforcement learning with KL-regularized objectives can enjoy faster rates of convergence or logarithmic regret, in contrast to the classical $\sqrt{T}$-type regret in the unregularized setting. However, the…
The contextual combinatorial semi-bandit problem with linear payoff functions is a decision-making problem in which a learner chooses a set of arms with the feature vectors in each round under given constraints so as to maximize the sum of…
The goal of this paper is to characterize Gaussian-Process optimization in the setting where the function domain is large relative to the number of admissible function evaluations, i.e., where it is impossible to find the global optimum. We…
Bayesian Optimization is a popular approach for optimizing expensive black-box functions. Its key idea is to use a surrogate model to approximate the objective and, importantly, quantify the associated uncertainty that allows a sequential…
Online reinforcement learning in infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs) remains less theoretically and algorithmically developed than its episodic counterpart, with many algorithms suffering from high ``burn-in'' costs and…
By leveraging the representation power of deep neural networks, neural upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithms have shown success in contextual bandits. To further balance the exploration and exploitation, we propose…
Bayesian bandit algorithms with approximate Bayesian inference have been widely used in real-world applications. However, there is a large discrepancy between the superior practical performance of these approaches and their theoretical…
In many modern applications, a system must dynamically choose between several adaptive learning algorithms that are trained online. Examples include model selection in streaming environments, switching between trading strategies in finance,…
Gaussian process (GP) bandits provide a powerful framework for performing blackbox optimization of unknown functions. The characteristics of the unknown function depend heavily on the assumed GP prior. Most work in the literature assume…