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Bilevel optimization problems embed the optimality of a subproblem as a constraint of another optimization problem. We introduce the concept of near-optimality robustness for bilevel optimization, protecting the upper-level solution…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-15 Mathieu Besançon , Miguel F. Anjos , Luce Brotcorne

When faced with multiple minima of an "inner-level" convex optimization problem, the convex bilevel optimization problem selects an optimal solution which also minimizes an auxiliary "outer-level" convex objective of interest. Bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-10 Khanh-Hung Giang-Tran , Nam Ho-Nguyen , Dabeen Lee

Although upper bound guarantees for bilevel optimization have been widely studied, progress on lower bounds has been limited due to the complexity of the bilevel structure. In this work, we focus on the smooth nonconvex-strongly-convex…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-11-27 Kaiyi Ji

We study a class of bilevel convex optimization problems where the goal is to find the minimizer of an objective function in the upper level, among the set of all optimal solutions of an optimization problem in the lower level. A wide range…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-09-27 Mostafa Amini , Farzad Yousefian

In this paper, we focus on simple bilevel optimization problems, where we minimize a convex smooth objective function over the optimal solution set of another convex smooth constrained optimization problem. We present a novel bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-03 Jincheng Cao , Ruichen Jiang , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Aryan Mokhtari

It is well known that bilevel optimization problems are hard to solve both in theory and practice. In this paper, we highlight a further computational difficulty when it comes to solving bilevel problems with continuous but nonconvex lower…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-05-04 Yasmine Beck , Daniel Bienstock , Martin Schmidt , Johannes Thürauf

We propose efficient methods for solving stochastic simple bilevel optimization problems with convex inner levels, where the goal is to minimize an outer stochastic objective function subject to the solution set of an inner stochastic…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-25 Khanh-Hung Giang-Tran , Soroosh Shafiee , Nam Ho-Nguyen

Algorithms for bilevel optimization often encounter Hessian computations, which are prohibitive in high dimensions. While recent works offer first-order methods for unconstrained bilevel problems, the constrained setting remains relatively…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-22 Guy Kornowski , Swati Padmanabhan , Kai Wang , Zhe Zhang , Suvrit Sra

This paper studies a class of simple bilevel optimization problems where we minimize a composite convex function at the upper-level subject to a composite convex lower-level problem. Existing methods either provide asymptotic guarantees for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-06 Jiulin Wang , Xu Shi , Rujun Jiang

Bilevel optimization minimizes an objective function, defined by an upper-level problem whose feasible region is the solution of a lower-level problem. We study the oracle complexity of finding an $\epsilon$-stationary point with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-01 Lesi Chen , Jingzhao Zhang

We consider the convex bilevel optimization problem, also known as simple bilevel programming. There are two challenges in solving convex bilevel optimization problems. Firstly, strong duality is not guaranteed due to the lack of Slater…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-29 Khanh-Hung Giang-Tran , Nam Ho-Nguyen , Fatma Kılınç-Karzan , Lingqing Shen

(Stochastic) bilevel optimization is a frequently encountered problem in machine learning with a wide range of applications such as meta-learning, hyper-parameter optimization, and reinforcement learning. Most of the existing studies on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-16 Meng Ding , Mingxi Lei , Yunwen Lei , Di Wang , Jinhui Xu

In this work, we develop analysis and algorithms for a class of (stochastic) bilevel optimization problems whose lower-level (LL) problem is strongly convex and linearly constrained. Most existing approaches for solving such problems rely…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-08 Prashant Khanduri , Ioannis Tsaknakis , Yihua Zhang , Sijia Liu , Mingyi Hong

Lower-bound analyses for nonconvex strongly-concave minimax optimization problems have shown that stochastic first-order algorithms require at least $\mathcal{O}(\varepsilon^{-4})$ oracle complexity to find an $\varepsilon$-stationary…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-15 Haoyuan Cai , Sulaiman A. Alghunaim , Ali H. Sayed

Bilevel optimization has been successfully applied to many important machine learning problems. Algorithms for solving bilevel optimization have been studied under various settings. In this paper, we study the nonconvex-strongly-convex…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-14 Xuxing Chen , Minhui Huang , Shiqian Ma

Bilevel learning refers to machine learning problems that can be formulated as bilevel optimization models, where decisions are organized in a hierarchical structure. This paradigm has recently gained considerable attention in machine…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-05 Riccardo Grazzi , Massimiliano Pontil , Saverio Salzo , Alain Zemkoho

In this paper, we introduce a new functional point of view on bilevel optimization problems for machine learning, where the inner objective is minimized over a function space. These types of problems are most often solved by using methods…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2024-12-10 Ieva Petrulionyte , Julien Mairal , Michael Arbel

Constrained bilevel optimization tackles nested structures present in constrained learning tasks like constrained meta-learning, adversarial learning, and distributed bilevel optimization. However, existing bilevel optimization methods…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-05 Wei Yao , Haian Yin , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

In this paper, we study multi-block min-max bilevel optimization problems, where the upper level is non-convex strongly-concave minimax objective and the lower level is a strongly convex objective, and there are multiple blocks of dual…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-11-22 Quanqi Hu , Yongjian Zhong , Tianbao Yang

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…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-02-15 Shoham Sabach , Shimrit Shtern