Variable Smoothing for Weakly Convex Composite Functions

We study minimization of a structured objective function, being the sum of a smooth function and a composition of a weakly convex function with a linear operator. Applications include image reconstruction problems with regularizers that introduce less bias than the standard convex regularizers. We develop a variable smoothing algorithm, based on the Moreau envelope with … Read more

An explicit Tikhonov algorithm for nested variational inequalities

We consider nested variational inequalities consisting in a (upper-level) variational inequality whose feasible set is given by the solution set of another (lower-level) variational inequality. Purely hierarchical convex bilevel optimization problems and certain multi-follower games are particular instances of nested variational inequalities. We present an explicit and ready-to-implement Tikhonov-type solution method for such problems. We … Read more

Effectively managing diagnostic tests to monitor the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy

Urged by the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Italy, this study aims at helping to tackle the spread of the disease by resorting to operations research techniques. In particular, we propose a mathematical program to model the problem of establishing how many diagnostic tests the Italian regions must perform in order to maximize the overall … Read more

Geometry of First-Order Methods and Adaptive Acceleration

First-order operator splitting methods are ubiquitous among many fields through science and engineering, such as inverse problems, signal/image processing, statistics, data science and machine learning, to name a few. In this paper, we study a geometric property of first-order methods when applying to solve non-smooth optimization problems. With the tool of “partial smoothness”, we design … Read more

The perturbation analysis of nonconvex low-rank matrix robust recovery

In this paper, we bring forward a completely perturbed nonconvex Schatten $p$-minimization to address a model of completely perturbed low-rank matrix recovery. The paper that based on the restricted isometry property generalizes the investigation to a complete perturbation model thinking over not only noise but also perturbation, gives the restricted isometry property condition that guarantees … Read more

An Outer-approximation Guided Optimization Approach for Constrained Neural Network Inverse Problems

This paper discusses an outer-approximation guided optimization method for constrained neural network inverse problems with rectified linear units. The constrained neural network inverse problems refer to an optimization problem to find the best set of input values of a given trained neural network in order to produce a predefined desired output in presence of constraints … Read more

Orthogonal projection algorithm for projecting onto a fnitely generated cone

In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to find the nearest point of a convex cone to a given vector, which is composed of a series of orthogonal projections. Some properties of this algorithm, including the reasonability of implementation, the global convergence property and the finite termination, etc., are obtained. The proposed algorithm is more … Read more

Convergence of Inexact Forward–Backward Algorithms Using the Forward–Backward Envelope

This paper deals with a general framework for inexact forward–backward algorithms aimed at minimizing the sum of an analytic function and a lower semicontinuous, subanalytic, convex term. Such framework relies on an implementable inexactness condition for the computation of the proximal operator, and a linesearch procedure which is possibly performed whenever a variable metric is … Read more

Zero Order Stochastic Weakly Convex Composite Optimization

In this paper we consider stochastic weakly convex composite problems, however without the existence of a stochastic subgradient oracle. We present a derivative free algorithm that uses a two point approximation for computing a gradient estimate of the smoothed function. We prove convergence at a similar rate as state of the art methods, however with … Read more

A relative-error inertial-relaxed inexact projective splitting algorithm

For solving structured monotone inclusion problems involving the sum of finitely many maximal monotone operators, we propose and study a relative-error inertial-relaxed inexact projective splitting algorithm. The proposed algorithm benefits from a combination of inertial and relaxation effects, which are both controlled by parameters within a certain range. We propose sufficient conditions on these parameters … Read more