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Solving bilevel optimization (BLO) problems to global optimality is generally intractable. A common surrogate is to compute a hyper-stationary point -- a stationary point of the hyper-objective function obtained by minimizing or maximizing…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-10-30 He Chen , Jiajin Li , Anthony Man-Cho So

Bilevel optimization has arisen as a powerful tool for many machine learning problems such as meta-learning, hyperparameter optimization, and reinforcement learning. In this paper, we investigate the nonconvex-strongly-convex bilevel…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-08-30 Kaiyi Ji , Junjie Yang , Yingbin Liang

There is a recent surge of interest in nonconvex reformulations via low-rank factorization for stochastic convex semidefinite optimization problem in the purpose of efficiency and scalability. Compared with the original convex formulations,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-02-27 Jinshan Zeng , Ke Ma , Yuan Yao

The paper provides global optimization algorithms for two particularly difficult nonconvex problems raised by hybrid system identification: switching linear regression and bounded-error estimation. While most works focus on local…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2017-11-27 Fabien Lauer

A recent line of research has shown that gradient-based algorithms with random initialization can converge to the global minima of the training loss for over-parameterized (i.e., sufficiently wide) deep neural networks. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-06-12 Difan Zou , Quanquan Gu

Bilevel optimization refers to scenarios whereby the optimal solution of a lower-level energy function serves as input features to an upper-level objective of interest. These optimal features typically depend on tunable parameters of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-08 Amber Yijia Zheng , Tong He , Yixuan Qiu , Minjie Wang , David Wipf

Bilevel optimization problems are receiving increasing attention in machine learning as they provide a natural framework for hyperparameter optimization and meta-learning. A key step to tackle these problems is the efficient computation of…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-05-20 Riccardo Grazzi , Massimiliano Pontil , Saverio Salzo

A wide range of applications arising in machine learning and signal processing can be cast as convex optimization problems. These problems are often ill-posed, i.e., the optimal solution lacks a desired property such as uniqueness or…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2019-07-18 Mostafa Amini , Farzad Yousefian

The bilevel program is an optimization problem where the constraint involves solutions to a parametric optimization problem. It is well-known that the value function reformulation provides an equivalent single-level optimization problem but…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-19 Kuang Bai , Jane Ye

In this work, we study first-order algorithms for solving Bilevel Optimization (BO) where the objective functions are smooth but possibly nonconvex in both levels and the variables are restricted to closed convex sets. As a first step, we…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Stephen Wright , Robert Nowak

Learning to Optimize (L2O) is a subfield of machine learning (ML) in which ML models are trained to solve parametric optimization problems. The general goal is to learn a fast approximator of solutions to constrained optimization problems,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-12-04 James Kotary , Himanshu Sharma , Ethan King , Draguna Vrabie , Ferdinando Fioretto , Jan Drgona

The authors' paper in Optimization 63 (2014), 505-533, see Ref. [5], was the first one to provide detailed optimality conditions for pessimistic bilevel optimization. The results there were based on the concept of the two-level optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2017-12-06 Stephan Dempe , Boris S. Mordukhovich , Alain B. Zemkoho

Estimating hyperparameters has been a long-standing problem in machine learning. We consider the case where the task at hand is modeled as the solution to an optimization problem. Here the exact gradient with respect to the hyperparameters…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-16 Matthias J. Ehrhardt , Lindon Roberts

We investigate the complexity of bilevel combinatorial optimization with uncertainty in the follower's objective, in a robust optimization approach. We show that the robust counterpart of the bilevel problem under interval uncertainty can…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-08-05 Christoph Buchheim , Dorothee Henke , Felix Hommelsheim

While stochastic bilevel optimization methods have been extensively studied for addressing large-scale nested optimization problems in machine learning, it remains an open question whether the optimal complexity bounds for solving bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-24 Tianshu Chu , Dachuan Xu , Wei Yao , Jin Zhang

We study a class of bilevel optimization problems in which both the upper- and lower-level problems have minimax structures. This setting captures a broad range of emerging applications. Despite the extensive literature on bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-11 Yiyang Shen , Yutian He , Weiran Wang , Qihang Lin

Bilevel optimization has shown its utility across various machine learning settings, yet most algorithms in practice require second-order information, making it challenging to scale them up. Only recently, a paradigm of first-order…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Rui Pan , Dylan Zhang , Hanning Zhang , Xingyuan Pan , Minrui Xu , Jipeng Zhang , Renjie Pi , Xiaoyu Wang , Tong Zhang

Bilevel optimization provides a powerful framework for modelling hierarchical decision-making systems. This work presents a sensitivity-based algorithm that addresses the bilevel structure directly by treating the lower-level optimal…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-28 Eduardo Nolasco , Ross D. King , Vassilios S. Vassiliadis

Bilevel optimization poses a significant computational challenge due to its nested structure, where each upper-level candidate solution requires solving a corresponding lower-level problem. While evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are effective…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Dejun Xu , Jijia Chen , Gary G. Yen , Min Jiang

The optimization problem behind neural networks is highly non-convex. Training with stochastic gradient descent and variants requires careful parameter tuning and provides no guarantee to achieve the global optimum. In contrast we show…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2016-10-31 Antoine Gautier , Quynh Nguyen , Matthias Hein