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Optimization and control of complex unsteady flows remains an important challenge due to the large cost of performing a function evaluation, i.e. a full computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. Reducing the number of required function…
In the field of global optimization, many existing algorithms face challenges posed by non-convex target functions and high computational complexity or unavailability of gradient information. These limitations, exacerbated by sensitivity to…
Derivative-free Riemannian optimization (DFRO) aims to minimize an objective function using only function evaluations, under the constraint that the decision variables lie on a Riemannian manifold. The rapid increase in problem dimensions…
Global optimization problems whose objective function is expensive to evaluate can be solved effectively by recursively fitting a surrogate function to function samples and minimizing an acquisition function to generate new samples. The…
This paper studies the performative prediction problem where a learner aims to minimize the expected loss with a decision-dependent data distribution. Such setting is motivated when outcomes can be affected by the prediction model, e.g., in…
This paper addresses the study of derivative-free smooth optimization problems, where the gradient information on the objective function is unavailable. Two novel general derivative-free methods are proposed and developed for minimizing…
In this paper, we present a novel derivative-free optimization framework for solving unconstrained stochastic optimization problems. Many problems in fields ranging from simulation optimization to reinforcement learning involve settings…
We consider minimizing functions for which it is expensive to compute the (possibly stochastic) gradient. Such functions are prevalent in reinforcement learning, imitation learning and adversarial training. Our target optimization framework…
Gaussian smoothing (GS) is a derivative-free optimization (DFO) algorithm that estimates the gradient of an objective using perturbations of the current parameters sampled from a standard normal distribution. We generalize it to sampling…
We introduce a derivative-free global optimization algorithm that efficiently computes minima for various classes of one-dimensional functions, including non-convex, and non-smooth functions.This algorithm numerically approximates the…
Gradient-free optimization methods, such as surrogate based optimization (SBO) methods, and genetic (GAs), or evolutionary (EAs) algorithms have gained popularity in the field of constrained optimization of expensive black-box functions.…
This paper investigates a category of constrained fractional optimization problems that emerge in various practical applications. The objective function for this category is characterized by the ratio of a numerator and denominator, both…
Optimization problems with nonlinear cost functions and combinatorial constraints appear in many real-world applications but remain challenging to solve efficiently compared to their linear counterparts. To bridge this gap, we propose…
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 note, we present a derivative-free trust-region (TR) algorithm for reliability based optimization (RBO) problems. The proposed algorithm consists of solving a set of subproblems, in which simple surrogate models of the reliability…
Designing a fast and efficient optimization method with local optima avoidance capability on a variety of optimization problems is still an open problem for many researchers. In this work, the concept of a new global optimization method…
This paper aims to address distributed optimization problems over directed and time-varying networks, where the global objective function consists of a sum of locally accessible convex objective functions subject to a feasible set…
We introduce a global, gradient-free surrogate optimization strategy for expensive black-box functions inspired by the Fokker-Planck and Langevin equations. These can be written as an optimization problem where the objective is the target…
Simulation models are widely used in practice to facilitate decision-making in a complex, dynamic and stochastic environment. But they are computationally expensive to execute and optimize, due to lack of analytical tractability. Simulation…
We present approximation theories and efficient training methods for derivative-informed Fourier neural operators (DIFNOs) with applications to PDE-constrained optimization. A DIFNO is an FNO trained by minimizing its prediction error…