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Bayesian optimization (BO) is effective for expensive black-box problems but remains challenging in high dimensions. We propose NeST-BO, a curvature-aware local BO method that targets a (modified) Newton step by jointly learning gradient…
Sampling-based optimization (SBO), like cross-entropy method and evolutionary algorithms, has achieved many successes in solving non-convex problems without gradients, yet its convergence is poorly understood. In this paper, we establish a…
We consider a novel setting of zeroth order non-convex optimization, where in addition to querying the function value at a given point, we can also duel two points and get the point with the larger function value. We refer to this setting…
Many real-world tasks require optimizing expensive black-box functions accessible only through noisy evaluations, a setting commonly addressed with Bayesian optimization (BO). While Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) have recently emerged as…
With the growing deployment of sequential recommender systems in e-commerce and other fields, their black-box interfaces raise security concerns: models are vulnerable to extraction and subsequent adversarial manipulation. Existing…
We introduce a novel distributed derivative-free optimization framework that is resilient to stragglers. The proposed method employs coded search directions at which the objective function is evaluated, and a decoding step to find the next…
In this work we present a new method of black-box optimization and constraint satisfaction. Existing algorithms that have attempted to solve this problem are unable to consider multiple modes, and are not able to adapt to changes in…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a method for globally optimizing black-box functions. While BO has been successfully applied to many scenarios, developing effective BO algorithms that scale to functions with high-dimensional domains is still…
Deep learning models are vulnerable to adversarial examples, which can fool a target classifier by imposing imperceptible perturbations onto natural examples. In this work, we consider the practical and challenging decision-based black-box…
Bayesian Optimization (BO) is a well-established method for addressing black-box optimization problems. In many real-world scenarios, optimization often involves multiple functions, emphasizing the importance of leveraging data and learned…
A global optimization framework, acronymed COMBEO (Change OfMeasure Based Evolutionary Optimization), is proposed. An important aspect in the development is a set of derivative-free additive directional terms obtainable through a change of…
We introduce contextual stochastic bilevel optimization (CSBO) -- a stochastic bilevel optimization framework with the lower-level problem minimizing an expectation conditioned on some contextual information and the upper-level decision…
Despite the great achievements of the modern deep neural networks (DNNs), the vulnerability/robustness of state-of-the-art DNNs raises security concerns in many application domains requiring high reliability. Various adversarial attacks are…
Bayesian optimization has been successfully applied to optimize black-box functions where the number of evaluations is severely limited. However, in many real-world applications, it is hard or impossible to know in advance which designs are…
We propose a zero-order optimization method for sequential min-max problems based on two populations of interacting particles. The systems are coupled so that one population aims to solve the inner maximization problem, while the other aims…
We study the problem of performance optimization of closed-loop control systems with unmodeled dynamics. Bayesian optimization (BO) has been demonstrated to be effective for improving closed-loop performance by automatically tuning…
Black-Box Optimization (BBO) methods can find optimal policies for systems that interact with complex environments with no analytical representation. As such, they are of interest in many Artificial Intelligence (AI) domains. Yet classical…
The graduated optimization approach, also known as the continuation method, is a popular heuristic to solving non-convex problems that has received renewed interest over the last decade. Despite its popularity, very little is known in terms…
Convex Optimization with Nested Evolving Feasible Sets (CONES)} is considered where the objective function $f$ remains fixed but the feasible region evolves over time as a nested sequence $S_1 \supseteq S_2 \supseteq \cdots \supseteq S_T$.…
We formalize the problem of contextual optimization through the lens of Bayesian experimental design and propose CO-BED -- a general, model-agnostic framework for designing contextual experiments using information-theoretic principles.…