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Evolutionary optimization algorithms, including particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been successfully applied in oil industry for production planning and control. Such optimization studies are quite challenging due to large number of…
We present a novel approach, referred to as the 'threshold shift method' (TSM), for reliability based design optimization (RBDO). The proposed approach is similar in spirit with the sequential optimization and reliability analysis (SORA)…
Motion planning is a key aspect of robotics. A common approach to address motion planning problems is trajectory optimization. Trajectory optimization can represent the high-level behaviors of robots through mathematical formulations.…
We study multistage distributionally robust optimization (DRO) to hedge against ambiguity in quantifying the underlying uncertainty of a problem. Recognizing that not all the realizations and scenario paths might have an "effect" on the…
We consider a multiperiod stochastic capacitated facility location problem under uncertain demand and budget in each period. Using a scenario tree representation of the uncertainties, we formulate a multistage stochastic integer program to…
The minimax excess risk optimization (MERO) problem is a new variation of the traditional distributionally robust optimization (DRO) problem, which achieves uniformly low regret across all test distributions under suitable conditions. In…
In this work, we design primal and dual bounding methods for multistage adaptive robust optimization (MSARO) problems motivated by two decision rules rooted in the stochastic programming literature. From the primal perspective, this is…
Two-stage stochastic optimization is a framework for modeling uncertainty, where we have a probability distribution over possible realizations of the data, called scenarios, and decisions are taken in two stages: we make first-stage…
A stochastic second-order trust region method is proposed, which can be viewed as a second-order extension of the trust-region-ish (TRish) algorithm proposed by Curtis et al. (INFORMS J. Optim. 1(3) 200-220, 2019). In each iteration, a…
Stochastic optimization of continuous objectives is at the heart of modern machine learning. However, many important problems are of discrete nature and often involve submodular objectives. We seek to unleash the power of stochastic…
The field of risk-constrained reinforcement learning (RCRL) has been developed to effectively reduce the likelihood of worst-case scenarios by explicitly handling risk-measure-based constraints. However, the nonlinearity of risk measures…
We consider the trade-off problem between exploration and exploitation under finite discounted Markov Decision Process, where the state transition matrix of the underlying environment stays unknown. We propose a double Thompson sampling…
An optimal dynamic treatment regime (DTR) consists of a sequence of decision rules in maximizing long-term benefits, which is applicable for chronic diseases such as HIV infection or cancer. In this paper, we develop a novel angle-based…
Many relevant problems in the area of systems and control, such as controller synthesis, observer design and model reduction, can be viewed as optimization problems involving dynamical systems: for instance, maximizing performance in the…
Many machine learning tasks involve subpopulation shift where the testing data distribution is a subpopulation of the training distribution. For such settings, a line of recent work has proposed the use of a variant of empirical risk…
This article devotes to developing robust but simple correction techniques and efficient algorithms for a class of second-order time stepping methods, namely the shifted fractional trapezoidal rule (SFTR), for subdiffusion problems to…
Microgrid operation is highly vulnerable to short-term load uncertainty, while conventional predict-then-optimize pipelines cannot fully align probabilistic forecasting quality with downstream robust scheduling performance. This paper…
Model-free reinforcement learning algorithms have seen remarkable progress, but key challenges remain. Trust Region Policy Optimization (TRPO) is known for ensuring monotonic policy improvement through conservative updates within a trust…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) agents can solve diverse tasks but often exhibit unsafe behavior. Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) address this by enforcing safety constraints, yet existing methods either sacrifice reward…
Stochastic gradient-based optimization is crucial to optimize neural networks. While popular approaches heuristically adapt the step size and direction by rescaling gradients, a more principled approach to improve optimizers requires…