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Direct Preference Optimization (DPO) has emerged as a popular alternative to Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), offering theoretical equivalence with simpler implementation. We prove this equivalence is conditional rather…

Safe derivative-free optimization under unknown constraints is a fundamental challenge in modern learning and control. Existing zeroth-order (ZO) methods typically still assume access to a first-order oracle of the constraint functions or…

We consider smooth stochastic convex optimization problems in the context of algorithms which are based on directional derivatives of the objective function. This context can be considered as an intermediate one between derivative-free…

A novel derivative-free algorithm, optimization by moving ridge functions (OMoRF), for unconstrained and bound-constrained optimization is presented. This algorithm couples trust region methodologies with output-based dimension reduction to…

When some parameters of a constrained optimization problem (COP) are uncertain, this gives rise to a predict-then-optimize (PtO) problem, comprising two stages: the prediction of the unknown parameters from contextual information and the…

This paper presents a subgradient-based algorithm for constrained nonsmooth convex optimization that does not require projections onto the feasible set. While the well-established Frank-Wolfe algorithm and its variants already avoid…

Reinforcement learning has become central to post-training large language models, yet dominant algorithms rely on clipping mechanisms that introduce optimization issues at scale, including zero-gradient regions, reward hacking, and training…

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…

We re-introduce a derivative-free subspace optimization framework originating from Chapter 5 of the Ph.D. thesis [Z. Zhang, On Derivative-Free Optimization Methods, Ph.D. thesis, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 2012] of the author…

Bilevel optimization has recently attracted considerable attention due to its abundant applications in machine learning problems. However, existing methods rely on prior knowledge of problem parameters to determine stepsizes, resulting in…

A new universal derivative-free optimization method CDOS (Conjugate Direction with Orthogonal Shift) is proposed. The CDOS method was specially developed to solve optimization tasks where the objective function and constraints are black…

In this paper, we study the problem of monotone (weakly) DR-submodular continuous maximization. While previous methods require the gradient information of the objective function, we propose a derivative-free algorithm LDGM for the first…

A tremendous range of design tasks in materials, physics, and biology can be formulated as finding the optimum of an objective function depending on many parameters without knowing its closed-form expression or the derivative. Traditional…

This paper considers stochastic convex optimization problems where the objective and constraint functions involve expectations with respect to the data indices or environmental variables, in addition to deterministic convex constraints on…

We propose an enhanced zeroth-order stochastic Frank-Wolfe framework to address constrained finite-sum optimization problems, a structure prevalent in large-scale machine-learning applications. Our method introduces a novel double variance…

An Adagrad-inspired class of algorithms for smooth unconstrained optimization is presented in which the objective function is never evaluated and yet the gradient norms decrease at least as fast as $\calO(1/\sqrt{k+1})$ while second-order…

We consider convex, black-box objective functions with additive or multiplicative noise with a high-dimensional parameter space and a data space of lower dimension, where gradients of the map exist, but may be inaccessible. We investigate…

This paper studies first-order algorithms for solving fully composite optimization problems over convex and compact sets. We leverage the structure of the objective by handling its differentiable and non-differentiable components…

Traditional nonparametric estimation methods often lead to a slow convergence rate in large dimensions and require unrealistically enormous sizes of datasets for reliable conclusions. We develop an approach based on partial derivatives,…

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) has achieved remarkable success in improving autoregressive models, especially in domains requiring correctness like mathematical reasoning and code generation. However, directly…