Related papers: A General Framework for User-Guided Bayesian Optim…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a principled approach to molecular design tasks. In this paper we explain three pitfalls of BO which can cause poor empirical performance: an incorrect prior width, over-smoothing, and inadequate acquisition…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is an effective paradigm for the optimization of expensive-to-sample systems. Standard BO learns the performance of a system $f(x)$ by using a Gaussian Process (GP) model; this treats the system as a black-box and…

High-dimensional Bayesian optimization (BO) tasks such as molecular design often require 10,000 function evaluations before obtaining meaningful results. While methods like sparse variational Gaussian processes (SVGPs) reduce computational…

Bayesian optimization (BO) methods are useful for optimizing functions that are expensive to evaluate, lack an analytical expression and whose evaluations can be contaminated by noise. These methods rely on a probabilistic model of the…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a sequential decision-making tool widely used for optimizing expensive black-box functions. Recently, Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable adaptability in low-data regimes, making them promising…

NUBO, short for Newcastle University Bayesian Optimisation, is a Bayesian optimization framework for the optimization of expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions, such as physical experiments and computer simulators. Bayesian optimization…

Multi-objective Bayesian optimization has been widely adopted in scientific experiment design, including drug discovery and hyperparameter optimization. In practice, regulatory or safety concerns often impose additional thresholds on…

Bayesian Optimization (BO) is an effective framework for globally optimizing functions whose evaluations are expensive. It is particularly effective for optimizing functions defined over continuous domains and explicitly handles stochastic…

Several scenarios require the optimization of non-convex black-box functions, that are noisy expensive to evaluate functions with unknown analytical expression, whose gradients are hence not accessible. For example, the hyper-parameter…

We study the problem of preferential Bayesian optimization (BO), where we aim to optimize a black-box function with only preference feedback over a pair of candidate solutions. Inspired by the likelihood ratio idea, we construct a…

Multi-Source Bayesian Optimization (MSBO) serves as a variant of the traditional Bayesian Optimization (BO) framework applicable to situations involving optimization of an objective black-box function over multiple information sources such…

Bayesian optimization is a methodology to optimize black-box functions. Traditionally, it focuses on the setting where you can arbitrarily query the search space. However, many real-life problems do not offer this flexibility; in…

Transfer learning for Bayesian optimisation has generally assumed a strong similarity between optimisation tasks, with at least a subset having similar optimal inputs. This assumption can reduce computational costs, but it is violated in a…

Bayesian optimization (BO ) is an effective method for optimizing expensive-to-evaluate black-box functions. While high-dimensional problems can be particularly challenging, due to the multitude of parameter choices and the potentially high…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular technique for sample-efficient optimization of black-box functions. In many applications, the parameters being tuned come with a carefully engineered default configuration, and practitioners only want…

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a popular method for efficiently inferring optima of an expensive black-box function via a sequence of queries. Existing information-theoretic BO procedures aim to make queries that most reduce the uncertainty…

Black-box optimization (BBO) has become increasingly relevant for tackling complex decision-making problems, especially in public policy domains such as police redistricting. However, its broader application in public policymaking is…

How should we intervene on an unknown structural equation model to maximize a downstream variable of interest? This setting, also known as causal Bayesian optimization (CBO), has important applications in medicine, ecology, and…

Bayesian optimization (BO) with Gaussian processes (GP) has become an indispensable algorithm for black box optimization problems. Not without a dash of irony, BO is often considered a black box itself, lacking ways to provide reasons as to…

In many real-world optimization problems, we have prior information about what objective function values are achievable. In this paper, we study the scenario that we have either exact knowledge of the minimum value or a, possibly inexact,…