Related papers: Continuous-Time Zeroth-Order Dynamics with Project…
This paper investigates how to accelerate the convergence of distributed optimization algorithms on nonconvex problems with zeroth-order information available only. We propose a zeroth-order (ZO) distributed primal-dual stochastic…
This paper investigates distributed zeroth-order feedback optimization in multi-agent systems with coupled constraints, where each agent operates its local action vector and observes only zeroth-order information to minimize a global cost…
In this paper we propose stochastic gradient-free methods and accelerated methods with momentum for solving stochastic optimization problems. All these methods rely on stochastic directions rather than stochastic gradients. We analyze the…
This paper investigates projection-free algorithms for stochastic constrained multi-level optimization. In this context, the objective function is a nested composition of several smooth functions, and the decision set is closed and convex.…
This paper focuses on projection-free methods for solving smooth Online Convex Optimization (OCO) problems. Existing projection-free methods either achieve suboptimal regret bounds or have high per-iteration computational costs. To fill…
Feedback optimization has emerged as a promising approach for optimizing the steady-state operation of dynamical systems while requiring minimal modeling efforts. Unfortunately, most existing feedback optimization methods rely on knowledge…
We consider escaping saddle points of nonconvex problems where only the function evaluations can be accessed. Although a variety of works have been proposed, the majority of them require either second or first-order information, and only a…
Feedback optimization has emerged as a promising approach for regulating dynamical systems to optimal steady states that are implicitly defined by underlying optimization problems. Despite their effectiveness, existing methods face two key…
Zeroth-order (ZO) methods are widely used when gradients are unavailable or prohibitively expensive, including black-box learning and memory-efficient fine-tuning of large models, yet their optimization dynamics in deep learning remain…
$\ell_0$ constrained optimization is prevalent in machine learning, particularly for high-dimensional problems, because it is a fundamental approach to achieve sparse learning. Hard-thresholding gradient descent is a dominant technique to…
Zero-order optimization has recently received significant attention for designing optimal trajectories and policies for robotic systems. However, most existing methods (e.g., MPPI, CEM, and CMA-ES) are local in nature, as they rely on…
A classical reduced order model for dynamical problems involves spatial reduction of the problem size. However, temporal reduction accompanied by the spatial reduction can further reduce the problem size without losing accuracy much, which…
To solve unmodeled optimization problems with hard constraints, this paper proposes a novel zeroth-order approach called Safe Zeroth-order Optimization using Linear Programs (SZO-LP). The SZO-LP method solves a linear program in each…
An adaptive projection-based reduced-order model (ROM) formulation is presented for model-order reduction of problems featuring chaotic and convection-dominant physics. An efficient method is formulated to adapt the basis at every time-step…
Nonintrusive projection-based reduced order models (ROMs) are essential for dynamics prediction in multi-query applications where access to the source of the underlying full order model (FOM) is unavailable; that is, FOM is a black-box.…
Zeroth-order or derivative-free optimization (MeZO) is an attractive strategy for finetuning large language models (LLMs) because it eliminates the memory overhead of backpropagation. However, it converges slowly due to the inherent curse…
We study a class of zeroth-order distributed optimization problems, where each agent can control a partial vector and observe a local cost that depends on the joint vector of all agents, and the agents can communicate with each other with…
Zeroth-order (ZO) optimization is widely used to handle challenging tasks, such as query-based black-box adversarial attacks and reinforcement learning. Various attempts have been made to integrate prior information into the gradient…
First-order methods for solving convex optimization problems have been at the forefront of mathematical optimization in the last 20 years. The rapid development of this important class of algorithms is motivated by the success stories…
Iterative optimization is central to modern artificial intelligence (AI) and provides a crucial framework for understanding adaptive systems. This review provides a unified perspective on this subject, bridging classic theory with neural…