Stephen Wright (UW Madison)

Sep 25, 2017.

Title and Abstract

Algorithmic Tools for Smooth Nonconvex Optimization

Unconstrained optimization of a smooth nonconvex objective over many variables is a classic problem in optimization. Several effective techniques have been proposed over the years, along with results about global and local convergence. There has been an upsurge of interest recently on techniques with good global complexity properties. (This interest is being driven largely by researchers in machine learning, who want to solve the nonconvex problems arising from neural network training and robust statistics, but it has roots in the optimization literature.) In this talk we describe the algorithmic tools that can be used to design methods with appealing practical behavior as well as provably good global convergence properties. These tools include the conjugate gradient and Lanczos algorithms, Newton's method, cubic regularization, trust regions, and accelerated gradient. We show how these elements can be assembled into a comprehensive method, and compare a number of proposals that have been made to date. If time permits, we will consider the behavior of first-order methods in the vicinity of saddle points, showing that accelerated gradient methods are as unlikely as gradient descent to converge to saddle points, and escapes from such points faster.

This talk presents joint work with Clement Royer and Mike O'Neill (both of U Wisconsin-Madison).

Bio

Stephen J. Wright holds the George B. Dantzig Professorship, the Sheldon Lubar Chair, and the Amar and Balinder Sohi Professorship of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is in computational optimization and its applications to many areas of science and engineering. Prior to joining UW-Madison in 2001, Wright held positions at North Carolina State University (1986-90), Argonne National Laboratory (1990-2001), and the University of Chicago (2000-2001). He has served as Chair of the Mathematical Optimization Society and as a Trustee of SIAM. He is a Fellow of SIAM. In 2014, he won the W.R.G. Baker award from IEEE.

Wright is the author / coauthor of widely used text and reference books in optimization including “Primal Dual Interior-Point Methods” and “Numerical Optimization”. He has published widely on optimization theory, algorithms, software, and applications.

Wright is current editor-in-chief of the SIAM Journal on Optimization and previously served as editor-in-chief or associate editor of Mathematical Programming (Series A), Mathematical Programming (Series B), SIAM Review, SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, and several other journals and book series