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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

We present a new feasible proximal gradient method for constrained optimization where both the objective and constraint functions are given by the summation of a smooth, possibly nonconvex function and a convex simple function. The…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-01 Digvijay Boob , Qi Deng , Guanghui Lan

Bilevel reinforcement learning (RL), which features intertwined two-level problems, has attracted growing interest recently. The inherent non-convexity of the lower-level RL problem is, however, to be an impediment to developing bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-02-28 Yan Yang , Bin Gao , Ya-xiang Yuan

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

In this paper, we present difference of convex algorithms for solving bilevel programs in which the upper level objective functions are difference of convex functions, and the lower level programs are fully convex. This nontrivial class of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-08-30 Jane J. Ye , Xiaoming Yuan , Shangzhi Zeng , Jin Zhang

Bilevel linear programming (LP) is one of the simplest classes of bilevel optimization problems, yet it is known to be NP-hard in general. Specifically, determining whether the optimal objective value of a bilevel LP is at least as good as…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-23 Nagisa Sugishita , Margarida Carvalho

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

Convex optimization problems arising in applications often have favorable objective functions and complicated constraints, thereby precluding first-order methods from being immediately applicable. We describe an approach that exchanges the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-02-05 Aleksandr Y. Aravkin , James V. Burke , Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy , Michael P. Friedlander , Scott Roy

Bilevel optimization problems embed the optimality of a subproblem as a constraint of another optimization problem. We introduce the concept of near-optimality robustness for bilevel optimization, protecting the upper-level solution…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-07-15 Mathieu Besançon , Miguel F. Anjos , Luce Brotcorne

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

In this paper, we consider bilevel optimization problem where the lower-level has coupled constraints, i.e. the constraints depend both on the upper- and lower-level variables. In particular, we consider two settings for the lower-level…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-03-14 Xiaotian Jiang , Jiaxiang Li , Mingyi Hong , Shuzhong Zhang

When faced with multiple minima of an "inner-level" convex optimization problem, the convex bilevel optimization problem selects an optimal solution which also minimizes an auxiliary "outer-level" convex objective of interest. Bilevel…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-10-10 Khanh-Hung Giang-Tran , Nam Ho-Nguyen , Dabeen Lee

We study bilevel optimization problems where the lower-level problems are strongly convex and have coupled linear constraints. To overcome the potential non-smoothness of the hyper-objective and the computational challenges associated with…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-02-06 Wei Shen , Jiawei Zhang , Minhui Huang , Cong Shen

In this paper, we introduce a \textit{Bi-level OPTimization} (BiOPT) framework for minimizing the sum of two convex functions, where both can be nonsmooth. The BiOPT framework involves two levels of methodologies. At the upper level of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2021-07-14 Masoud Ahookhosh , Yurii Nesterov

On solving a convex-concave bilinear saddle-point problem (SPP), there have been many works studying the complexity results of first-order methods. These results are all about upper complexity bounds, which can determine at most how many…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-08-10 Yuyuan Ouyang , Yangyang Xu

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

Finding the optimal hyperparameters of a model can be cast as a bilevel optimization problem, typically solved using zero-order techniques. In this work we study first-order methods when the inner optimization problem is convex but…

Differentiable optimization layers enable learning systems to make decisions by solving embedded optimization problems. However, computing gradients via implicit differentiation requires solving a linear system with Hessian terms, which is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-12-03 Zihao Zhao , Kai-Chia Mo , Shing-Hei Ho , Brandon Amos , Kai Wang

We consider the problem of finding stationary points in Bilevel optimization when the lower-level problem is unconstrained and strongly convex. The problem has been extensively studied in recent years; the main technical challenge is to…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-02-13 Jeongyeol Kwon , Dohyun Kwon , Hanbaek Lyu

We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-04-15 Michael Muehlebach , Michael I. Jordan