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This paper investigates a class of stochastic bilevel optimization problems where the upper-level function is nonconvex with potentially unbounded smoothness and the lower-level problem is strongly convex. These problems have significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-01-16 Xiaochuan Gong , Jie Hao , Mingrui Liu

First-order stochastic methods are the state-of-the-art in large-scale machine learning optimization owing to efficient per-iteration complexity. Second-order methods, while able to provide faster convergence, have been much less explored…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-12-01 Naman Agarwal , Brian Bullins , Elad Hazan

In this paper we study stochastic quasi-Newton methods for nonconvex stochastic optimization, where we assume that noisy information about the gradients of the objective function is available via a stochastic first-order oracle (SFO). We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-05-23 Xiao Wang , Shiqian Ma , Donald Goldfarb , Wei Liu

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

We study a class of bilevel optimization problems in which both the upper- and lower-level problems have minimax structures. This setting captures a broad range of emerging applications. Despite the extensive literature on bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Yiyang Shen , Yutian He , Weiran Wang , Qihang Lin

This paper analyzes a two-timescale stochastic algorithm framework for bilevel optimization. Bilevel optimization is a class of problems which exhibit a two-level structure, and its goal is to minimize an outer objective function with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-06-09 Mingyi Hong , Hoi-To Wai , Zhaoran Wang , Zhuoran Yang

In this paper, we consider multi-stage stochastic optimization problems with convex objectives and conic constraints at each stage. We present a new stochastic first-order method, namely the dynamic stochastic approximation (DSA) algorithm,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-22 Guanghui Lan , Zhiqiang Zhou

In this paper, we study a class of bilevel optimization problems, also known as simple bilevel optimization, where we minimize a smooth objective function over the optimal solution set of another convex constrained optimization problem.…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-04-25 Ruichen Jiang , Nazanin Abolfazli , Aryan Mokhtari , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

Differentiable optimization layers enable learning systems to make decisions by solving embedded optimization problems. However, computing gradients via implicit differentiation requires solving a linear system with Hessian terms, which is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zihao Zhao , Kai-Chia Mo , Shing-Hei Ho , Brandon Amos , Kai Wang

In this paper, we propose a multilevel stochastic framework for the solution of nonconvex unconstrained optimization problems. The proposed approach uses random regularized first-order models that exploit an available hierarchical…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-27 Filippo Marini , Margherita Porcelli , Elisa Riccietti

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

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

Bilevel optimization (BO) is useful for solving a variety of important machine learning problems including but not limited to hyperparameter optimization, meta-learning, continual learning, and reinforcement learning. Conventional BO…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-09-20 Mao Ye , Bo Liu , Stephen Wright , Peter Stone , Qiang Liu

Bilevel optimization is an important class of optimization problems where one optimization problem is nested within another. While various methods have emerged to address unconstrained general bilevel optimization problems, there has been a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-15 Nazanin Abolfazli , Ruichen Jiang , Aryan Mokhtari , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani

In recent years, a variety of gradient-based first-order methods have been developed to solve bi-level optimization problems for learning applications. However, theoretical guarantees of these existing approaches heavily rely on the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-03 Risheng Liu , Pan Mu , Xiaoming Yuan , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Stochastic approximation (SA) algorithms have been widely applied in minimization problems when the loss functions and/or the gradient information are only accessible through noisy evaluations. Stochastic gradient (SG) descent---a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-08-26 Jingyi Zhu , Long Wang , James C. Spall

In this paper, we consider both first- and second-order techniques to address continuous optimization problems arising in machine learning. In the first-order case, we propose a framework of transition from deterministic or…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-11-30 Sanae Lotfi , Tiphaine Bonniot de Ruisselet , Dominique Orban , Andrea Lodi

In this work we derive a second-order approach to bilevel optimization, a type of mathematical programming in which the solution to a parameterized optimization problem (the "lower" problem) is itself to be optimized (in the "upper"…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-06 Robert Dyro , Edward Schmerling , Nikos Arechiga , Marco Pavone

Recently, lower-level constrained bilevel optimization has attracted increasing attention. However, existing methods mostly focus on either deterministic cases or problems with linear constraints. The main challenge in stochastic cases with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-13 Hantao Nie , Jiaxiang Li , Zaiwen Wen

Bilevel optimization is a central tool in machine learning for high-dimensional hyperparameter tuning. Its applications are vast; for instance, in imaging it can be used for learning data-adaptive regularizers and optimizing forward…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Mohammad Sadegh Salehi , Subhadip Mukherjee , Lindon Roberts , Matthias J. Ehrhardt