Related papers: A Variable Smoothing for Weakly Convex Composite M…

We propose a stochastic approximation method for approximating the efficient frontier of chance-constrained nonlinear programs. Our approach is based on a bi-objective viewpoint of chance-constrained programs that seeks solutions on the…

We propose a novel study of the stochastic proximal gradient method for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, one of which is smooth. Under suitable assumptions and without requiring any boundedness or control of the variance of the…

We present an algorithm for minimizing the sum of a strongly convex time-varying function with a time-invariant, convex, and nonsmooth function. The proposed algorithm employs the prediction-correction scheme alongside the forward-backward…

Composite minimization involves a collection of smooth functions which are aggregated in a nonsmooth manner. In the convex setting, we design an algorithm by linearizing each smooth component in accordance with its main curvature. The…

We consider a family of algorithms that successively sample and minimize simple stochastic models of the objective function. We show that under reasonable conditions on approximation quality and regularity of the models, any such algorithm…

This paper is devoted to some approaches for convex min-min problems with smoothness and strong convexity in only one of the two variable groups. It is shown that the proposed approaches, based on Vaidya's cutting plane method and…

We propose perturbed proximal algorithms that can provably escape strict saddles for nonsmooth weakly convex functions. The main results are based on a novel characterization of $\epsilon$-approximate local minimum for nonsmooth functions,…

This paper studies a structured compound stochastic program (SP) involving multiple expectations coupled by nonconvex and nonsmooth functions. We present a successive convex-programming based sampling algorithm and establish its…

In this paper, a novel stochastic extra-step quasi-Newton method is developed to solve a class of nonsmooth nonconvex composite optimization problems. We assume that the gradient of the smooth part of the objective function can only be…

We present a framework for smooth optimization of explicitly regularized objectives for (structured) sparsity. These non-smooth and possibly non-convex problems typically rely on solvers tailored to specific models and regularizers. In…

We present a robust adaptive beamforming algorithm based on the worst-case criterion and the constrained constant modulus approach, which exploits the constant modulus property of the desired signal. Similarly to the existing worst-case…

The recent literature on first order methods for smooth optimization shows that significant improvements on the practical convergence behaviour can be achieved with variable stepsize and scaling for the gradient, making this class of…

This paper investigates solving convex composite optimization on an undirected network, where each node, privately endowed with a smooth component function and a nonsmooth one, is required to minimize the sum of all the component functions…

We consider the problem of minimizing the composition of a smooth (nonconvex) function and a smooth vector mapping, where the inner mapping is in the form of an expectation over some random variable or a finite sum. We propose a stochastic…

Stochastic optimization has found wide applications in minimizing objective functions in machine learning, which motivates a lot of theoretical studies to understand its practical success. Most of existing studies focus on the convergence…

In this paper, we address stochastic optimization problems involving a composition of a non-smooth outer function and a smooth inner function, a formulation frequently encountered in machine learning and operations research. To deal with…

Bilevel programming has recently received a great deal of attention due to its abundant applications in many areas. The optimal value function approach provides a useful reformulation of the bilevel problem, but its utility is often limited…

This paper presents a novel learning-based approach to construct a surrogate problem that approximates a given parametric nonconvex optimization problem. The surrogate function is designed to be the minimum of a finite set of functions,…

In this paper, we study the low-rank matrix minimization problem, where the loss function is convex but nonsmooth and the penalty term is defined by the cardinality function. We first introduce an exact continuous relaxation, that is, both…

We propose a stochastic optimization method for the minimization of the sum of three convex functions, one of which has Lipschitz continuous gradient as well as restricted strong convexity. Our approach is most suitable in the setting where…