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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.…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2023-07-20 Desi R. Ivanova , Joel Jennings , Tom Rainforth , Cheng Zhang , Adam Foster

Black-box optimization minimizes an objective function without derivatives or explicit forms. Such an optimization method with continuous variables has been successful in the fields of machine learning and material science. For discrete…

The pursuit of universal black-box optimization (BBO) algorithms is a longstanding goal. However, unlike domains such as language or vision, where scaling structured data has driven generalization, progress in offline BBO remains hindered…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-06-10 Rong-Xi Tan , Ming Chen , Ke Xue , Yao Wang , Yaoyuan Wang , Sheng Fu , Chao Qian

Bayesian optimization (BO) is a powerful framework for optimizing black-box, expensive-to-evaluate functions. Over the past decade, many algorithms have been proposed to integrate cheaper, lower-fidelity approximations of the objective…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-27 Petrus Mikkola , Julien Martinelli , Louis Filstroff , Samuel Kaski

Optimizing objectives under constraints, where both the objectives and constraints are black box functions, is a common scenario in real-world applications such as scientific experimental design, design of medical therapies, and industrial…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-16 Fengxue Zhang , Zejie Zhu , Yuxin Chen

Bayesian optimization (BO) aims to minimize a given blackbox function using a model that is updated whenever new evidence about the function becomes available. Here, we address the problem of BO under partially right-censored response data,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2013-10-09 Frank Hutter , Holger Hoos , Kevin Leyton-Brown

Feedback optimization optimizes the steady state of a dynamical system by implementing optimization iterations in closed loop with the plant. It relies on online measurements and limited model information, namely, the input-output…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-09 Winnie Chan , Zhiyu He , Keith Moffat , Saverio Bolognani , Michael Muehlebach , Florian Dörfler

Most black-box optimization methods require extensive hyperparameter tuning, often limiting their ability to generalize across different optimization domains. Foundation models for black-box optimization that learn optimization principles…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-25 Aaron Klein , Herilalaina Rakotoarison , Luca Thale-Bombien , David Salinas

We propose a variant of consensus-based optimization (CBO) algorithms, controlled-CBO, which introduces a feedback control term to improve convergence towards global minimizers of non-convex functions in multiple dimensions. The feedback…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-07-29 Yuyang Huang , Michael Herty , Dante Kalise , Nikolas Kantas

Several fundamental problems in science and engineering consist of global optimization tasks involving unknown high-dimensional (black-box) functions that map a set of controllable variables to the outcomes of an expensive experiment.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-09-15 Mohamed Aziz Bhouri , Michael Joly , Robert Yu , Soumalya Sarkar , Paris Perdikaris

Many software engineering tasks, such as testing, and anomaly detection can benefit from the ability to infer a behavioral model of the software.Most existing inference approaches assume access to code to collect execution sequences. In…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-10-13 Foozhan Ataiefard , Mohammad Jafar Mashhadi , Hadi Hemmati , Niel Walkinshaw

Model selection is an integral problem of model based optimization techniques such as Bayesian optimization (BO). Current approaches often treat model selection as an estimation problem, to be periodically updated with observations coming…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-08-02 Manisha Senadeera , Santu Rana , Sunil Gupta , Svetha Venkatesh

The performance, reliability, cost, size and energy usage of computing systems can be improved by one or more orders of magnitude by the systematic use of modern control and optimization methods. Computing systems rely on the use of…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2017-10-13 Eric C. Kerrigan

Many modern software systems are highly configurable, allowing the user to tune them for performance and more. Current performance modeling approaches aim at finding performance-optimal configurations by building performance models in a…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-02-15 Max Weber , Sven Apel , Norbert Siegmund

Black box optimization (BBO) focuses on optimizing unknown functions in high-dimensional spaces. In many applications, sampling the unknown function is expensive, imposing a tight sample budget. Ongoing work is making progress on reducing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-29 Rajalaxmi Rajagopalan , Yu-Lin Wei , Romit Roy Choudhury

Black-box model-based optimization (MBO) problems, where the goal is to find a design input that maximizes an unknown objective function, are ubiquitous in a wide range of domains, such as the design of proteins, DNA sequences, aircraft,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-18 Brandon Trabucco , Xinyang Geng , Aviral Kumar , Sergey Levine

The diverse world of machine learning applications has given rise to a plethora of algorithms and optimization methods, finely tuned to the specific regression or classification task at hand. We reduce the complexity of algorithm design for…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2016-05-23 Zeyuan Allen-Zhu , Elad Hazan

Black-box optimization algorithms have been widely used in various machine learning problems, including reinforcement learning and prompt fine-tuning. However, directly optimizing the training loss value, as commonly done in existing…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-17 Feiyang Ye , Yueming Lyu , Xuehao Wang , Masashi Sugiyama , Yu Zhang , Ivor Tsang

Closed-loop performance of sequential decision making algorithms, such as model predictive control, depends strongly on the choice of controller parameters. Bayesian optimization allows learning of parameters from closed-loop experiments,…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-11-18 Sebastian Hirt , Lukas Theiner , Rolf Findeisen

We introduce COCO, an open source platform for Comparing Continuous Optimizers in a black-box setting. COCO aims at automatizing the tedious and repetitive task of benchmarking numerical optimization algorithms to the greatest possible…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-09-10 Nikolaus Hansen , Anne Auger , Raymond Ros , Olaf Mersmann , Tea Tušar , Dimo Brockhoff