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Mixed-integer extensions of evolution strategies (ES) that discretize selected coordinates of sampled continuous vectors often impose a lower bound on the standard deviation of integer variables to prevent premature convergence. While these…

Many real-world optimisation problems are defined over both categorical and continuous variables, yet efficient optimisation methods such asBayesian Optimisation (BO) are not designed tohandle such mixed-variable search spaces. Recent…

Evolutionary optimization algorithms often face defects and limitations that complicate the evolution processes or even prevent them from reaching the global optimum. A notable constraint pertains to the considerable quantity of function…

The Increasing Population Covariance Matrix Adaptation Evolution Strategy (IPOP-CMA-ES) algorithm is a reference stochastic optimizer dedicated to blackbox optimization, where no prior knowledge about the underlying problem structure is…

Box-constraints limit the domain of decision variables and are common in real-world optimization problems, for example, due to physical, natural or spatial limitations. Consequently, solutions violating a box-constraint may not be…

Max-value entropy search (MES) is one of the state-of-the-art approaches in Bayesian optimization (BO). In this paper, we propose a novel variant of MES for constrained problems, called Constrained MES via Information lower BOund…

This paper introduces a novel theoretically sound approach for the celebrated CMA-ES algorithm. Assuming the parameters of the multi variate normal distribution for the minimum follow a conjugate prior distribution, we derive their optimal…

The optimization of expensive to evaluate, black-box, mixed-variable functions, i.e. functions that have continuous and discrete inputs, is a difficult and yet pervasive problem in science and engineering. In Bayesian optimization (BO),…

Bilinear Matrix Inequalities (BMIs) are fundamental to control system design but are notoriously difficult to solve due to their nonconvexity. This study addresses BMI-based control optimization problems by adapting and integrating advanced…

Modern machine learning uses more and more advanced optimization techniques to find optimal hyper parameters. Whenever the objective function is non-convex, non continuous and with potentially multiple local minima, standard gradient…

Model merging has emerged as a cost-effective alternative to training large language models (LLMs) from scratch, enabling researchers to combine pre-trained models into more capable systems without full retraining. Evolutionary approaches…

Bayesian Optimization (BO) is an effective method for finding the global optimum of expensive black-box functions. However, it is well known that applying BO to high-dimensional optimization problems is challenging. To address this issue, a…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a model-based approach to sequentially optimize expensive black-box functions, such as the validation error of a deep neural network with respect to its hyperparameters. In many real-world scenarios, the…

Existing Meta-Black-Box Optimization (MetaBBO) methods focus on how to search when controlling optimizers, but largely overlook where to search. We propose MetaSG-SAEA, a bi-level MetaBBO framework for expensive constrained multi-objective…

In the post-Moore era, main performance gains of black-box optimizers are increasingly depending on parallelism, especially for large-scale optimization (LSO). Here we propose to parallelize the well-established covariance matrix adaptation…

Black-box optimization has potential in numerous applications such as hyperparameter optimization in machine learning and optimization in design of experiments. Ising machines are useful for binary optimization problems because variables…

Background: Multi-collimator proton minibeam radiation therapy (MC-pMBRT) has recently emerged as a versatile technique for dose shaping, enabling peak-valley dose patterns in organs-at-risk (OAR) while maintaining a uniform dose…

Molecular property optimization (MPO) problems are inherently challenging since they are formulated over discrete, unstructured spaces and the labeling process involves expensive simulations or experiments, which fundamentally limits the…

In this study, we investigate the problem of min-max continuous optimization in a black-box setting $\min_{x} \max_{y}f(x,y)$. A popular approach updates $x$ and $y$ simultaneously or alternatingly. However, two major limitations have been…

Optimisation problems often have multiple conflicting objectives that can be computationally and/or financially expensive. Mono-surrogate Bayesian optimisation (BO) is a popular model-based approach for optimising such black-box functions.…