Differential Privacy via Distributionally Robust Optimization

In recent years, differential privacy has emerged as the de facto standard for sharing statistics of datasets while limiting the disclosure of private information about the involved individuals. This is achieved by randomly perturbing the statistics to be published, which in turn leads to a privacy-accuracy trade-off: larger perturbations provide stronger privacy guarantees, but they … Read more

Multi-model Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes

We propose a new multi-model partially observable Markov decision process (MPOMDP) model to address the issue of model ambiguity in partially observable Markov decision process. Here, model ambiguity is defined as the case where there are multiple credible optimization models with the same structure but different model parameters. The proposed MPOMDP model aims to learn … Read more

Numerical Methods for Convex Multistage Stochastic Optimization

\(\) Optimization problems involving sequential decisions in  a  stochastic environment    were studied  in  Stochastic Programming (SP), Stochastic Optimal Control  (SOC) and Markov Decision Processes (MDP). In this paper we mainly concentrate on SP and  SOC modelling   approaches. In these frameworks there are natural situations  when the considered problems are  convex. Classical approach to sequential … Read more

Algorithms for Cameras View-Frame Placement Problems in the Presence of an Adversary and Distributional Ambiguity

In this paper, we introduce cameras view-frame placement problem (denoted by CFP) in the presence an adversary whose objective is to minimize the maximum coverage by p cameras in response to input provided by n autonomous agents in a remote location. We allow uncertainty in the success of attacks, incomplete information of the probability distribution … Read more

A Quasi-Newton Algorithm for Optimal Discretization of Markov Processes

In stochastic programming and stochastic-dynamic programming discretization of random model parameters is often unavoidable. We propose a quasi-Newton learning algorithm to discretize multi-dimensional, continuous discrete-time Markov processes to scenario lattices by minimizing the Wasserstein distance between the unconditional distributions of process and lattice. Scenario lattices enable accurate discretization of the conditional distributions of Markov processes … Read more

A Stochastic Benders Decomposition Scheme for Large-Scale Stochastic Network Design

Network design problems involve constructing edges in a transportation or supply chain network to minimize construction and daily operational costs. We study a stochastic version where operational costs are uncertain due to fluctuating demand and estimated as a sample average from historical data. This problem is computationally challenging, and instances with as few as  100 … Read more

Nonexpansive Markov Operators and Random Function Iterations for Stochastic Fixed Point Problems

We study the convergence of random function iterations for finding an invariant measure of the corresponding Markov operator. We call the problem of finding such an invariant mea- sure the stochastic fixed point problem. This generalizes earlier work studying the stochastic feasibility problem, namely, to find points that are, with probability 1, fixed points of … Read more

Sequential Quadratic Optimization for Stochastic Optimization with Deterministic Nonlinear Inequality and Equality Constraints

A sequential quadratic optimization algorithm for minimizing an objective function defined by an expectation subject to nonlinear inequality and equality constraints is proposed, analyzed, and tested. The context of interest is when it is tractable to evaluate constraint function and derivative values in each iteration, but it is intractable to evaluate the objective function or … Read more

A Sequential Quadratic Programming Method for Optimization with Stochastic Objective Functions, Deterministic Inequality Constraints and Robust Subproblems

In this paper, a robust sequential quadratic programming method of Burke and Han (Math Programming, 1989)  for constrained optimization is generalized to problem with stochastic objective function, deterministic equality and inequality constraints. A stochastic line search scheme in Paquette and Scheinberg (SIOPT, 2020) is employed to globalize the steps. We show that in the case … Read more

Bilevel optimization with a multi-objective lower-level problem: Risk-neutral and risk-averse formulations

In this work, we propose different formulations and gradient-based algorithms for deterministic and stochastic bilevel problems with conflicting objectives in the lower level. Such problems have received little attention in the deterministic case and have never been studied from a stochastic approximation viewpoint despite the recent advances in stochastic methods for single-level, bilevel, and multi-objective … Read more