This edition of the Continuous Optimization workshop aims to bring together leading experts from diverse backgrounds and career stages to discuss recent advances in the field. The program spans algorithms, theory and applications. Given the wide applicability of optimization in engineering (including machine learning as a prominent example) and the commonalities in mathematical tools used in other foundational fields (e.g., complexity theory, variational analysis, the dynamical systems view of iterative algorithms, the prevalence of various flavors of geometry and more), we expect renewed interactions with several other workshops, including Foundations of Data Science and Machine Learning, Computational Optimal Transport, Inverse Problems, Computational Algebraic Geometry, Random Matrices, Quantum Information and Quantum Algorithms, Computational Dynamics, and Numerical Linear Algebra.
Organizers
Speakers
Semi-plenary speakers
Université Paris-Dauphine
UC San Diego
Invited speakers
University of Pennsylvania
University of British Columbia
University of Oxford
Georgia Tech
University of Vienna
University of Pennsylvania
UC Berkeley
U. of Wisconsin–Madison
Stanford University
Johns Hopkins University
MIT
Catholic University of Chile
MIT
Toulouse School of Economics
UC Louvain
Cornell University
ENS Paris
CNRS
Georgia Tech
Thursday, 16.July
14:00-14:30
Yurii Nesterov (Shenzen Loop Area Institute)
Universal Complexity Bounds for Universal Gradient Methods in Nonlinear Optimization
14:30-15:00
Swati Gupta (MIT)
Improved Regret Guarantees for Online Mirror Descent using a Portfolio of Mirror Maps
15:00-16:00 semi-plenary talk
Dmitriy Drusvyatskiy (UC San Diego)
Gradient descent with adaptive stepsize converges (nearly) linearly under fourth-order growth
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
17:30-18:00
Samuel Vaiter (CNRS / Université Côte D’Azur)
Bilevel Optimization in Machine Learning: Successes & Pitfalls
18:00-18:30
Coralia Cartis (Oxford University)
Optimization aspects in mathematical foundations of deep learning
Friday, 17.July
14:00-14:30
Heinz Bauschke (UBC Okanagan)
On the strong convergence of some optimization algorithms in the linear case
14:30-15:00
Christopher Criscitiello (University of Pennsylvania, Wharton)
Smooth, globally Polyak-Łojasiewicz functions are nonlinear least-squares
15:00-15:30
Edouard Pauwels (Toulouse School of Economics)
The adjoint state method for parametric definable optimization without smoothness or uniqueness
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
17:00-17:30
Cristobal Guzman (Pontificia Universidad Catolica De Chile)
Advances in Differentially Private Synthetic Data Generation
17:30-18:00
John Duchi (Stanford University)
Finding Stationary Points in Stochastic Convex Optimization: Why and How
Saturday, 18.July
14:00-14:30
Jason Altschuler (University of Pennsylvania)
14:30-15:00
Jelena Diakonikolas (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
15:30-16:00
Adrien Taylor (Inria)
16:00-16:30 Coffee Break
16:30-17:30 semi-plenary talk
Irène Waldspurger (CNRS, Inria)
Burer-Monteiro factorization: correctness guarantees and implementation
17:30-18:00
Ying Cui (UC Berkeley)
Sketching the Global Landscape of Nonconvex Optimization via Weakly Convex Relaxations
