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This paper studies simple bilevel problems, where a convex upper-level function is minimized over the optimal solutions of a convex lower-level problem. We first show the fundamental difficulty of simple bilevel problems, that the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-01-28 Huaqing Zhang , Lesi Chen , Jing Xu , Jingzhao Zhang

In this paper, we study zeroth-order algorithms for minimax optimization problems that are nonconvex in one variable and strongly-concave in the other variable. Such minimax optimization problems have attracted significant attention lately…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-04-06 Zhongruo Wang , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian , Shiqian Ma , Meisam Razaviyayn

Finite-difference methods are a class of algorithms designed to solve black-box optimization problems by approximating a gradient of the target function on a set of directions. In black-box optimization, the non-smooth setting is…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-07 Marco Rando , Cesare Molinari , Lorenzo Rosasco , Silvia Villa

Bilevel optimization and bilevel minimax optimization have recently emerged as unifying frameworks for a range of machine-learning tasks, including hyperparameter optimization and reinforcement learning. The existing literature focuses on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-23 Xuelin Zhang , Peipei Yuan

Gradient-based Bi-Level Optimization (BLO) methods have been widely applied to handle modern learning tasks. However, most existing strategies are theoretically designed based on restrictive assumptions (e.g., convexity of the lower-level…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-09 Risheng Liu , Xuan Liu , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang , Yixuan Zhang

In this paper, we focus on simple bilevel optimization problems, where we minimize a convex smooth objective function over the optimal solution set of another convex smooth constrained optimization problem. We present a novel bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-06-03 Jincheng Cao , Ruichen Jiang , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Aryan Mokhtari

Zeroth-order optimization (ZOO) is an important framework for stochastic optimization when gradients are unavailable or expensive to compute. A potential limitation of existing ZOO methods is the bias inherent in most gradient estimators…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-24 Shaocong Ma , Heng Huang

This paper investigates the stochastic distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by the summation of $n$ local cost functions. We solve such a problem by involving zeroth-order (ZO) information…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-10-15 Shengjun Zhang , Yunlong Dong , Dong Xie , Lisha Yao , Colleen P. Bailey , Shengli Fu

Nonconvex and nonsmooth bi-level optimization poses critical theoretical challenges, while arising in several applications. In this work, we develop a method for nonconvex, nonsmooth bi-level optimization and introduce Binno, a first-order…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-05 Laura Selicato , Flavia Esposito , Andersen Ang

In this work, we consider bilevel optimization when the lower-level problem is strongly convex. Recent works show that with a Hessian-vector product (HVP) oracle, one can provably find an $\epsilon$-stationary point within…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-05-26 Lesi Chen , Yaohua Ma , Jingzhao Zhang

Bilevel optimization is widely applied in many machine learning tasks such as hyper-parameter learning, meta learning and reinforcement learning. Although many algorithms recently have been developed to solve the bilevel optimization…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-26 Feihu Huang

Modern machine learning algorithms usually involve tuning multiple (from one to thousands) hyperparameters which play a pivotal role in terms of model generalizability. Black-box optimization and gradient-based algorithms are two dominant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-02-19 Bin Gu , Guodong Liu , Yanfu Zhang , Xiang Geng , Heng Huang

Bilevel optimization is a key framework in hierarchical decision-making, where one problem is embedded within the constraints of another. In this work, we propose a control-theoretic approach to solving bilevel optimization problems. Our…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-25 Sina Sharifi , Nazanin Abolfazli , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Mahyar Fazlyab

In this letter, we first propose a \underline{Z}eroth-\underline{O}rder c\underline{O}ordinate \underline{M}ethod~(ZOOM) to solve the stochastic optimization problem over a decentralized network with only zeroth-order~(ZO) oracle feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-10-11 Shengjun Zhang , Tan Shen , Hongwei Sun , Yunlong Dong , Dong Xie , Heng Zhang

In this paper we propose a sequential minimax optimization (SMO) method for solving a class of constrained bilevel optimization problems in which the lower-level part is a possibly nonsmooth convex optimization problem, while the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-11-11 Zhaosong Lu , Sanyou Mei

$\ell_0$ constrained optimization is prevalent in machine learning, particularly for high-dimensional problems, because it is a fundamental approach to achieve sparse learning. Hard-thresholding gradient descent is a dominant technique to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-19 William de Vazelhes , Hualin Zhang , Huimin Wu , Xiao-Tong Yuan , Bin Gu

Bilevel optimization recently has received tremendous attention due to its great success in solving important machine learning problems like meta learning, reinforcement learning, and hyperparameter optimization. Extending single-agent…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-06-02 Xuxing Chen , Minhui Huang , Shiqian Ma , Krishnakumar Balasubramanian

Deep learning models, despite their impressive achievements, suffer from high computational costs and memory requirements, limiting their usability in resource-constrained environments. Sparse neural networks significantly alleviate these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-16 Jie Ji , Gen Li , Kaiyuan Deng , Fatemeh Afghah , Xiaolong Ma

In the evolving landscape of natural language processing (NLP), fine-tuning pre-trained Large Language Models (LLMs) with first-order (FO) optimizers like SGD and Adam has become standard. Yet, as LLMs grow {in size}, the substantial memory…

Bilevel optimization involves a hierarchical structure where one problem is nested within another, leading to complex interdependencies between levels. We propose a single-loop, tuning-free algorithm that guarantees anytime feasibility,…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-08-15 Sina Sharifi , Erfan Yazdandoost Hamedani , Mahyar Fazlyab