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In this paper, we study and analyze zeroth-order stochastic approximation algorithms for solving bilvel problems, when neither the upper/lower objective values, nor their unbiased gradient estimates are available. In particular, exploiting…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-02 Alireza Aghasi , Saeed Ghadimi

We develop and analyze stochastic approximation algorithms for solving nested compositional bi-level optimization problems. These problems involve a nested composition of $T$ potentially non-convex smooth functions in the upper-level, and a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-07-12 Xuxing Chen , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi

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

Stochastic bilevel optimization (SBO) has become a standard framework for hyperparameter learning, data reweighting, representation learning, and data-mixture optimization in deep learning. Existing exact single-loop SBO methods and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Hengrui Zhang , Boao Kong , Engao Zhang , Kun Yuan

In this paper, we study smooth stochastic multi-level composition optimization problems, where the objective function is a nested composition of $T$ functions. We assume access to noisy evaluations of the functions and their gradients,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-02-15 Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Saeed Ghadimi , Anthony Nguyen

Block coordinate descent methods and stochastic subgradient methods have been extensively studied in optimization and machine learning. By combining randomized block sampling with stochastic subgradient methods based on dual averaging, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2015-09-16 Qi Deng , Guanghui Lan , Anand Rangarajan

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

Bilevel optimization (BLO) offers a principled framework for hierarchical decision-making and has been widely applied in machine learning tasks such as hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. While existing BLO methods are mostly…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-20 Zhuo Chen , Xinjian Xu , Shihui Ying , Tieyong Zeng

We study a class of algorithms for solving bilevel optimization problems in both stochastic and deterministic settings when the inner-level objective is strongly convex. Specifically, we consider algorithms based on inexact implicit…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-07-12 Michael Arbel , Julien Mairal

We introduce a new approach to develop stochastic optimization algorithms for a class of stochastic composite and possibly nonconvex optimization problems. The main idea is to combine two stochastic estimators to create a new hybrid one. We…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-05-05 Quoc Tran-Dinh , Nhan H. Pham , Dzung T. Phan , Lam M. Nguyen

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

Bilevel Optimization has experienced significant advancements recently with the introduction of new efficient algorithms. Mirroring the success in single-level optimization, stochastic gradient-based algorithms are widely used in bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-11-12 Junyi Li , Heng Huang

Stochastic Gradient (SG) is the defacto iterative technique to solve stochastic optimization (SO) problems with a smooth (non-convex) objective $f$ and a stochastic first-order oracle. SG's attractiveness is due in part to its simplicity of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-03-08 David Newton , Raghu Bollapragada , Raghu Pasupathy , Nung Kwan Yip

In this paper, we develop zeroth-order algorithms with provably (nearly) optimal sample complexity for stochastic bilevel optimization, where only noisy function evaluations are available. We propose two distinct algorithms: the first is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-07 Alireza Aghasi , Jeongyeol Kwon , Saeed Ghadimi

This work focuses on addressing two major challenges in the context of large-scale nonconvex Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) problems, which are increasingly applied in machine learning due to their ability to model nested structures. These…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-05-17 Risheng Liu , Zhu Liu , Wei Yao , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Online bilevel optimization (OBO) is a powerful framework for machine learning problems where both outer and inner objectives evolve over time, requiring dynamic updates. Current OBO approaches rely on deterministic \textit{window-smoothed}…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Parvin Nazari , Bojian Hou , Davoud Ataee Tarzanagh , Li Shen , George Michailidis

This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-28 Huaqing Zhang , Lesi Chen , Jing Xu , Jingzhao Zhang

Bilevel optimization has gained significant attention in recent years due to its broad applications in machine learning. This paper focuses on bilevel optimization in decentralized networks and proposes a novel single-loop algorithm for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-04-24 Youran Dong , Shiqian Ma , Junfeng Yang , Chao Yin

In this article we intend to develop a simple and implementable algorithm for minimizing a convex function over the solution set of another convex optimization problem. Such a problem is often referred to as a simple bilevel programming…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-17 Stephan Dempe , Joydeep Duta , Tanushree Pandit , K. S. Mallikarjuna Rao

Bilevel optimization has been widely applied in many important machine learning applications such as hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. Recently, several momentum-based algorithms have been proposed to solve bilevel optimization…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-17 Junjie Yang , Kaiyi Ji , Yingbin Liang