Related papers: Second-Order Stein Variational Dynamic Optimizatio…
Evolutionary algorithms, inspired by natural evolution, aim to optimize difficult objective functions without computing derivatives. Here we detail the relationship between population genetics and evolutionary optimization and formulate a…
In this work, a nonlinear momentum method is introduced to enhance the convergence performance of momentum-based gradient optimization algorithms. Classical momentum methods, such as the Heavy Ball method, can be viewed as a dynamical…
This paper proposes a novel technique called "successive stochastic smoothing" that optimizes nonsmooth and discontinuous functions while considering various constraints. Our methodology enables local and global optimization, making it a…
First-order stochastic methods are the state-of-the-art in large-scale machine learning optimization owing to efficient per-iteration complexity. Second-order methods, while able to provide faster convergence, have been much less explored…
This paper presents a novel stochastic gradient descent algorithm for constrained optimization. The proposed algorithm randomly samples constraints and components of the finite sum objective function and relies on a relaxed logarithmic…
We provide several quantum algorithms for continuous optimization that do not require gradient estimation. Instead, we encode the optimization problem into the dynamics of a physical system and coherently simulate the time evolution. We…
Signal Temporal Logic (STL) enables formal specification of complex spatiotemporal constraints for robotic task planning. However, synthesizing long-horizon continuous control trajectories from complex STL specifications is fundamentally…
In this paper, we propose a conditional gradient method for solving constrained vector optimization problems with respect to a partial order induced by a closed, convex and pointed cone with nonempty interior. When the partial order under…
We consider in this paper a class of composite optimization problems whose objective function is given by the summation of a general smooth and nonsmooth component, together with a relatively simple nonsmooth term. We present a new class of…
The structural design of functional molecules, also called molecular optimization, is an essential chemical science and engineering task with important applications, such as drug discovery. Deep generative models and combinatorial…
Variational Optimization forms a differentiable upper bound on an objective. We show that approaches such as Natural Evolution Strategies and Gaussian Perturbation, are special cases of Variational Optimization in which the expectations are…
This article proposes an improved trajectory optimization approach for stochastic optimal control of dynamical systems affected by measurement noise by combining optimal control with maximum likelihood techniques to improve the reduction of…
This paper focuses on the contextual optimization problem where a decision is subject to some uncertain parameters and covariates that have some predictive power on those parameters are available before the decision is made. More…
This paper investigates distributed zeroth-order optimization for smooth nonconvex problems, targeting the trade-off between convergence rate and sampling cost per zeroth-order gradient estimation in current algorithms that use either the…
In this paper, we study a class of deterministically constrained stochastic optimization problems. Existing methods typically aim to find an $\epsilon$-stochastic stationary point, where the expected violations of both constraints and…
We propose an unconstrained optimization method based on the well-known primal-dual hybrid gradient (PDHG) algorithm. We first formulate the optimality condition of the unconstrained optimization problem as a saddle point problem. We then…
The dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) has become a leading tool for data-driven modeling of dynamical systems, providing a regression framework for fitting linear dynamical models to time-series measurement data. We present a simple…
A central challenge to many fields of science and engineering involves minimizing non-convex error functions over continuous, high dimensional spaces. Gradient descent or quasi-Newton methods are almost ubiquitously used to perform such…
We propose an algorithm for optimizations in which the gradients contain stochastic noise. This arises, for example, in structural optimizations when computations of forces and stresses rely on methods involving Monte Carlo sampling, such…
We develop a multidimensional Stein methodology for non-degenerate self-decomposable random vectors in $\mathbb{R}^d$ having finite first moment. Building on previous univariate findings, we solve an integro-partial differential Stein…