Related papers: On a minimization problem of the maximum generaliz…

Minimizing a convex function over the spectrahedron, i.e., the set of all positive semidefinite matrices with unit trace, is an important optimization task with many applications in optimization, machine learning, and signal processing. It…

With the extensive application of submodularity, its generalizations are constantly being proposed. However, most of them are tailored for special problems. In this paper, we focus on quasi-submodularity, a universal generalization, which…

We consider the problem of minimizing the sum of two convex functions: one is the average of a large number of smooth component functions, and the other is a general convex function that admits a simple proximal mapping. We assume the whole…

Positive semi-definite matrices commonly occur as normal matrices of least squares problems in statistics or as kernel matrices in machine learning and approximation theory. They are typically large and dense. Thus algorithms to solve…

We propose a new first-order optimisation algorithm to solve high-dimensional non-smooth composite minimisation problems. Typical examples of such problems have an objective that decomposes into a non-smooth empirical risk part and a…

Frank-Wolfe methods (FW) have gained significant interest in the machine learning community due to its ability to efficiently solve large problems that admit a sparse structure (e.g. sparse vectors and low-rank matrices). However the…

In this paper, we consider the problem of estimating the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the covariance kernel (i.e., the functional principal components) from sparse and irregularly observed longitudinal data. We approach this problem…

We study a class of nonconvex nonsmooth optimization problems in which the objective is a sum of two functions: One function is the average of a large number of differentiable functions, while the other function is proper, lower…

Optimization models with non-convex constraints arise in many tasks in machine learning, e.g., learning with fairness constraints or Neyman-Pearson classification with non-convex loss. Although many efficient methods have been developed…

We consider distributed convex optimization problems that involve a separable objective function and nontrivial functional constraints, such as Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). We propose a decentralized and computationally inexpensive…

This paper deals with convex nonsmooth optimization problems. We introduce a general smooth approximation framework for the original function and apply random (accelerated) coordinate descent methods for minimizing the corresponding smooth…

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…

We consider global efficiency of algorithms for minimizing a sum of a convex function and a composition of a Lipschitz convex function with a smooth map. The basic algorithm we rely on is the prox-linear method, which in each iteration…

We address the problem of minimizing a convex smooth function $f(x)$ over a compact polyhedral set $D$ given a stochastic zeroth-order constraint feedback model. This problem arises in safety-critical machine learning applications, such as…

We consider the problem of global optimization of an unknown non-convex smooth function with zeroth-order feedback. In this setup, an algorithm is allowed to adaptively query the underlying function at different locations and receives noisy…

Maximizing submodular objectives under constraints is a fundamental problem in machine learning and optimization. We study the maximization of a nonnegative, non-monotone $\gamma$-weakly DR-submodular function over a down-closed convex…

We present two approximate versions of the proximal subgradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions (not necessarily differentiable). The algorithms involve, at each iteration, inexact evaluations of the proximal operator…

We prove convergence of a single time-scale stochastic subgradient method with subgradient averaging for constrained problems with a nonsmooth and nonconvex objective function having the property of generalized differentiability. As a tool…

We introduce a new convex optimization problem, termed quadratic decomposable submodular function minimization. The problem is closely related to decomposable submodular function minimization and arises in many learning on graphs and…

In this paper, we present a generic framework to extend existing uniformly optimal convex programming algorithms to solve more general nonlinear, possibly nonconvex, optimization problems. The basic idea is to incorporate a local search…