News – Albert S. Berahas

News travels fast in places where nothing much ever happens.

Charles Bukowski

2024

September 2024: Hosted Francisco Jara Moroni (Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile) as a research visitor in the IOE department
September 2024: Presented in the ORIE Seminar Series at the University of Texas in Austin
August 2024: Received a grant titled “Advanced Algorithms for Nonlinear Constrained Stochastic Optimization” from the Office of Naval Research (in collaboration with Michael J. O’Neill)
August 2024: Presented at the Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications (MOPTA) conference in Bethlehem, PA; also served on the organizing committee
July 2024: Hosted Clément Royer (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL) as a research visitor in the IOE department
July 2024: Presented at the International Symposium on Mathematical Programming in Montreal, Canada and organized 4 sessions
July 2024: Our paper “Gradient Descent in the Absence of Global Lipschitz Continuity of the Gradients” (joint work with Vivak Patel) has been accepted for publication in the SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science
June 2024: Presented at the 2nd Derivative-Free Optimization Symposium in Padova, Italy
June 2024: Received a 2024 Propelling Original Data Science (PODS) award in collaboration with Professor Raed Al Kontar from the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS) (WinAI: Propelling UM Soccer with Data-Driven AI)
June 2024: New Paper “Modified Line Search Sequential Quadratic Methods for Equality-Constrained Optimization with Unified Global and Local Convergence Guarantees” (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Jiahao Shi)
May 2024: Honored to be awarded the IISE Operations Research Division Teaching Award (link)
May 2024: Thrilled to receive an Engaged Detroit Workshop Grant for our project Engineering Detroit’s Future: Empowering Detroit’s Next Generation through Engineering Exploration in collaboration with Leia Stirling and Patrícia Alves-Oliveira and the Detroit Educational Takeover and NSBE Detroit Professionals (link)
April 2024: Hosted OPTIMAIZE DAY 2024 in collaboration with the Detroit Educational Takeover, a workshop for highschool students from Detroit
April 2024: New Paper “Second-order Information Promotes Mini-Batch Robustness in Variance-Reduced Gradients” (joint work with Sachin Garg and Michał Dereziński)
March 2024: Presented at the Control Seminar at the University of Michigan
March 2024: Honored to be awarded the IOE Department Award
February 2024: Our paper “Non-Uniform Smoothness for Gradient Descent” (joint work with Lindon Roberts and Fred Roosta) has been accepted for publication in Transactions on Machine Learning Research
February 2024: Jiahao Shi will intern at Amazon this summer. Congratulations, Jiahao!
January 2024: Honored to be awarded the 2024 North Campus Dean’s MLK Spirit Award for Community Building & Impact

2023

December 2023: Presented at CSE DSI Machine Learning Seminar Series at the University of Minnesota
December 2023: New Paper “A Flexible Gradient Tracking Algorithmic Framework for Decentralized Optimization” (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Shagun Gupta)
November 2023: Presented at Department of Mathematics and Statistic Seminar at Loyola University
November 2023: New Paper “Non-Uniform Smoothness for Gradient Descent” (joint work with Lindon Roberts and Fred Roosta)
November 2023: Co-organized the inaugural IOE Undergraduate Research Symposium
October 2023: Hosted OPTIMAIZE DAY, a one-day workshop for high-school students from Detroit
October 2023: Honored to serve on the INFORMS DEIC
October 2023: Presented at the INFORMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ; Also chaired 4 sessions and co-organized the INFORMS JFIG Luncheon
September 2023: Our paper “A Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Optimization Algorithm for Nonlinear Equality Constrained Optimization with Rank-Deficient Jacobians” (joint work with Frank E. Curtis, Michael J. O’Neill and Daniel P. Robinson) has been accepted for publication in Mathematics of Operations Research
September 2023: New Paper “Adaptive Consensus: A network pruning approach for decentralized optimization” (joint work with Suhail M. Shah and Raghu Bollapragada)
August 2023: Presented at the Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications (MOPTA) conference in Bethlehem, PA; Also served on the organizing committee and chaired the poster competition
August 2023: Baoyu Zhou joins the research team as a postdoctoral research fellow-Welcome, Baoyu!
July 2023: Our paper “First- and Second-Order High Probability Complexity Bounds for Trust-Region Methods with Noisy Oracles” (joint work with Liyuan Cao and Katya Scheinberg) has been accepted for publication in Mathematical Programming
June 2023: Visited Clément Royer at Université Paris Dauphine-PSL for 2 weeks
June 2023: New Paper “Collaborative and Distributed Bayesian Optimization via Consensus: Showcasing the Power of Collaboration for Optimal Design” (joint work with Xubo Yue, Raed Al Kontar, Yang Liu, Zhenghao Zai, Kevin Edgar and Blake N. Johnson)
May 2023: Presented at the SIAM Optimization conference in Seattle, WA
May 2023: Our paper “Multiblock Parameter Calibration in Computer Models” (joint work with Cheoljoon Jeong, Ziang Xu, Eunshin Byon and Kristen Cetin) has been accepted for publication in the INFORMS Journal on Data Science
April 2023: Our paper “Accelerating stochastic sequential quadratic programming for equality constrained optimization using predictive variance reduction” (joint work with Jiahao Shi, Zihong Yi and Baoyu Zhou) has been accepted for publication in Computational Optimization and Applications
March 2023: New Paper “Balancing Communication and Computation in Distributed Optimization” (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Shagun Gupta)
February 2023: Honored to be awarded the Mathematical Programming 2022 Meritorious Service Award
January 2023: Presented at the Michigan Institute Computational Discovery and Engineering (MICDE) Seminar Series Winter 2023
January 2023: Presented at the 12th US-Mexico Workshop on Optimization and Its Applications, Huatulco, Mexico
January 2023: New Paper “A Sequential Quadratic Programming Method with High Probability Complexity Bounds for Nonlinear Equality Constrained Stochastic Optimization” (joint work with Miaolan Xie and Baoyu Zhou)

2022

December 2022: Co-organized the “Order up! The Benefits of Higher-Order Optimization in Machine Learning“ workshop at NeurIPS 2022 (co-organizers Jelena Diakonikolas, Jarad M. Forristal, Brandon Reese, Martin Takáč and Yan Xu)
November 2022: Our paper “Full-low evaluation methods for derivative-free optimization” (joint work with Oumaima Sohab and Luis Nunes Vicente) has been accepted for publication in Optimization Methods and Software
October 2022: Co-organized the IOE Graduate Recruiting Workshop
October 2022: New Paper “Gradient Descent in the Absence of Global Lipschitz Continuity of the Gradients: Convergence, Divergence and Limitations of its Continuous Approximation” (joint work with Vivak Patel)
September 2022: Participated in a video about industrial engineering; check it out! Long version/Short version
August 2022: Received a grant in collaboration with Clément Royer from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation – FACE Foundation (ALIAS: Adaptive, Local and Innovative Algorithms for Stochastic Optimization)
July 2022: Our NeurIPS workshop “Order up! The Benefits of Higher-Order Optimization in Machine Learning” (co-organizers Jelena Diakonikolas, Jarad Forristal, Brandon Reese, Martin Takac and Yan Xu) has been accepted
June 2022: New Paper “An Adaptive Sampling Sequential Quadratic Programming Method for Equality Constrained Stochastic Optimization” (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Baoyu Zhou)
May 2022: Received a Seeding To Accelerate Research Themes (START) grant from the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan (with Professors Laura Balzano, Eunshin Byon, Salar Fattahi and Qing Qu)
May 2022: Hosted Baoyu Zhou (Lehigh University) as a research visitor in the IOE department
May 2022: New Paper “First- and Second-Order High Probability Complexity Bounds for Trust-Region Methods with Noisy Oracles” (joint work with Liyuan Cao and Katya Scheinberg)
May 2022: Hosted Vivak Patel (University of Wisconsin-Madison) as a research visitor in the IOE department
April 2022: Elected Vice-President/President-Elect of the INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG)
April 2022: New Paper “Accelerating Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Programming for Equality Constrained Optimization using Predictive Variance Reduction” (joint work with Jiahao Shi, Zihong Yi and Baoyu Zhou)
March 2022: Co-organized an INFORMS Junior Faculty Interest Group (JFIG) panel on “From Finding Funding Opportunities to CAREER Awards: A Guide for Junior Faculty” (recording)
March 2022: Hosted Clément Royer (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL) as a research visitor in the IOE department (Clément Royer’s MIDAS talk)
March 2022: Presented at Mathematics in Imaging, Data and Optimization (MIDO) Seminar (Department of Mathematical Science) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
February 2022: New Paper “Modeling and Predicting Heavy-Duty Vehicle Engine-Out and Tailpipe Nitrogen Oxide NOx Emissions using Deep Learning” (joint work with Rinav Pillai, Vassilis Triantopoulos, Matthew Brusstar, Ruonan Sun, Tim Nevius and André L. Boehman) has been published in Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering (Engine and Automotive Engineering, Special Issue: Artificial Intelligence for Future Internal Combustion Engines: Experiments, Modeling, and Optimization)
February 2022: Presented at the Computational Mathematics Seminar at the Mathematical Sciences Institute at the Australian National University (Canberra, Australia; virtual)
January 2022: Presented at the Workshop on Optimization, Probability, and Simulation (WOPS 2022, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)

2021

December 2021: Invited to be the co-chair of the Nonlinear Optimization cluster for the ICCOPT 2022 conference (International Conference on Continuous Optimization)
October 2021: Very interesting presentations in the Nonlinear Optimization cluster at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2021; Thank you to all the speakers and session organizers.

October 2021: Presented in a session organized by Lijun Ding and Madeleine Udell (Recent Advances in Nonconvex Optimization II) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting 2021
September 2021: Organized the IOE department seminars this semester

September 2021: Presented in the OR Colloquium at Penn State University (Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering)
September 2021: Invited to be the chair of the Nonlinear Optimization cluster for the INFORMS 2022 Optimization Society Conference
August 2021: Our paper “Quasi-Newton Methods for Machine Learning: Forget the Past, Just Sample“ (joint work with Majid Jahani, Peter Richtárik and Martin Takáč) has been accepted for publication in Optimization Methods & Software
August 2021: New Paper “Full-low evaluation methods for derivative-free optimization“ (joint work with Oumaima Sohab and Luis Nunes Vicente)
August 2021: Chair of the organizing committee of the MOPTA 2021 conference August 2-4, 2021

July 2021: Co-organized the “Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems“ workshop at ICML 2021 (co-organizers Raghu Bollapragrada, Rixon Crane, Amir Gholami, J. Lyle Kim, Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis, and Michael Mahoney, Fred Roosta, Rachael Tappenden)

July 2021: New Paper “A Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Optimization Algorithm for Nonlinear Equality Constrained Optimization with Rank-Deficient Jacobians“ (joint work with Frank E. Curtis, Michael J. O’Neill and Daniel P. Robinson)
July 2021: Presented in a session organized by Thomas O’Leary-Roseberry, Peng Chen and Omar Ghattas (Beyond First Order Methods in Large-Scale Stochastic Optimization) at the SIAM Optimization Conference
July 2021: Organized six sessions (Methods for Large-Scale, Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization I/II/III and Recent Advancements in Optimization Methods for Machine Learning I/II/III) at the SIAM Optimization Conference
July 2021: Presented in a session organized by Clément Royer (Derivative-free Optimization and Connections to Machine Learning) at the 31st European Conference on Operational Research (EURO 2021)
July 2021: Organized three sessions (Beyond first order methods in machine learning) and presented at the 18th International Workshop on Continuous Optimization (EUROPT 2021)
June 2021: Our paper “On the Convergence of Nested Decentralized Gradient Methods with Multiple Consensus and Gradient Steps“ (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Ermin Wei) has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
May 2021: Our paper “Sequential Quadratic Optimization for Nonlinear Equality Constrained Stochastic Optimization“ (joint work with Frank E. Curtis, Daniel P. Robinson and Baoyu Zhou) has been accepted for publication in SIAM Journal on Optimization
May 2021: Our paper “Auction-Based Preferential Shift Scheduling: A Case Study on the Lehigh University Libraries“ (joint work with Sudeep Metha and Ved Patel) has been accepted for publication in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Annual Conference and Expo, IISE 2021
April 2021: Presented in the Statistics Seminar at UW Madison (Department of Statistics)
April 2021: Presented in a session organized by Giampaolo Luizzi (Optimization in Machine Learning) at the 3rd IMA and OR Society Conference on Mathematics of Operational Research (IMA ORS)
April 2021: Our ICML 2020 workshop “Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems“ (co-organizers Raghu Bollapragrada, Rixon Crane, Amir Gholami, J. Lyle Kim, Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis, and Michael Mahoney, Fred Roosta, Rachael Tappenden) has been accepted (all past workshops can be found here)
March 2021: Our paper “A Theoretical and Empirical Comparison of Gradient Approximations in Derivative-Free Optimization“ (joint work with Liyuan Cao, Krzysztof Choromanski and Katya Scheinberg) has been accepted for publication in Foundations of Computational Mathematics
March 2021: Our paper “Global Convergence Rate Analysis of a Generic Line Search Algorithm with Noise“ (joint work with Liyuan Cao and Katya Scheinberg) has been accepted for publication in SIAM Journal on Optimization
March 2021: Presented in a session organized by Amir Gholaminejad, Fred Roosta and Michael Mahoney (Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems) at the SIAM CSE 2021
February 2021: Organized the IOE department seminars this semester

February 2021: Our paper “SONIA: A Symmetric Blockwise Truncated Optimization Algorithm“ (joint work with Majid Jahani, Mohammadreza Nazari, Rachael Tappenden and Martin Takáč) has been accepted for publication at the 24th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2021)
January 2021: Our paper “Limited-Memory BFGS with Displacement Aggregation“ (joint work with Frank E. Curtis and Baoyu Zhou) has been accepted for publication in Mathematical Programming

2020

December 2020: Elected INFORMS Optimization Society Vice Chair for Nonlinear Optimization
November 2020: Organized four sessions (Methods for Large Scale, Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization I/II/III/IV) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting
November 2020: Presented in a session organized by Siqian Shen (Computational Methods for Large-scale Stochastic Programs) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting
September 2020: Our paper “Finite Difference Neural Networks: Fast Prediction of Partial Differential Equations“ (joint work with Zheng Shi, Nur Sila Gulgec, Shamim N. Pakzad and Martin Takáč) has been accepted for publication at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (IEEE-ICMLA 2020)
September 2020: Presented in the MIDAS (Michigan Institute for Data Science) Faculty Pitch Presentations (link)
September 2020: Became an Affiliated Faculty member of MIDAS (Michigan Institute for Data Science) and MICDE (Michigan Institute of for Computational Discovery and Engineering)
August 2020: Officially joined the Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor (faculty profile, IOE news)
July 2020: New paper “Sequential Quadratic Optimization for Nonlinear Equality Constrained Stochastic Optimization“ (joint work with Frank E. Curtis, Daniel P. Robinson and Baoyu Zhou)
June 2020: New paper “SONIA: A Symmetric Blockwise Truncated Optimization Algorithm“ (joint work with Majid Jahani, Mohammadreza Nazari, Rachael Tappenden and Martin Takáč)
June 2020: New paper “Finite Difference Neural Networks: Fast Prediction of Partial Differential Equations“ (joint work with Zheng Shi, Nur Sila Gulgec, Shamim N. Pakzad and Martin Takáč)
May 2020: New paper “On the Convergence of Nested Decentralized Gradient Methods with Multiple Consensus and Gradient Steps“ (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Ermin Wei)
May 2020: Our paper “Scaling Up Quasi-Newton Algorithms: Communication Efficient Distributed SR1“ (joint work with Majid Jahani, Mohammadreza Nazari, Sergey Rusakov and Martin Takáč) has been accepted for publication at The Sixth International Conference on Machine Learning, Optimization, and Data Science
March 2020: Our ICML 2020 workshop “Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems“ (co-organizers Amir Gholami, Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis, Fred Roosta and Michael Mahoney) has been accepted (all past workshops can be found here)
February 2020: Invited to present at the DataX Workshop: Old and New Open Questions in Optimization at Princeton University
February 2020: Our paper “An Investigation of Newton-Sketch and Subsampled Newton Methods“ (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada and Jorge Nocedal) has been accepted for publication in Optimization Methods and Software
February 2020: I will be joining the Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor in August 2020.
January 2020: Presented in a session organized by Luis Tenorio and Stephen Becker (Derivative Free Optimization for High-Dimensional Problems) at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, Denver, CO
January 2020: Invited to be the chair of the organizing committee of the Modeling and Optimization: Theory and Applications (MOPTA) 2020 conference at Lehigh University

2019

December 2019: Videos from our NeurIPS workshop “Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems“ are online
November 2019: Presented in the Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing Seminar at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University (invited by Michael Overton)
October 2019: Presented in a session organized by Raghu Bollapragada (Recent Developments in Optimization for Machine Learning) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA
October 2019: Organized four sessions (Methods for Large Scale, Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization I/II/III/IV) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA
October 2019: New paper “Global Convergence Rate Analysis of a Generic Line Search Algorithm with Noise“ (joint work with Liyuan Cao and Katya Scheinberg)
October 2019: Presented at the ORIE Young Researchers workshop at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
August 2019: Our paper “A Robust Multi-Batch L-BFGS Method for Machine Learning“ (joint work with Martin Takáč) has been accepted for publication in Optimization Methods and Software
August 2019: Organized four sessions (Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization I/II/III/IV) at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization, Berlin, Germany
August 2019: Organized four sessions (Recent Advancements in Optimization Methods for Machine Learning I/II/III/IV) at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization, Berlin, Germany
August 2019: Presented in a session (Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization IV) at the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization, Berlin, Germany
July 2019: Our NeurIPS 2019 workshop “Beyond First Order Methods in Machine Learning Systems“ (co-organizers Anastasios (Tasos) Kyrillidis, Fred Roosta and Michael Mahoney) has been accepted
July 2019: Our paper “Nested Distributed Gradient Methods with Adaptive Quantized Communication“ (joint work with Ermin Wei and Charikleia Iakovidou) has been accepted for publication at the 58th Conference on Decision and Control
June 2019: New paper “Linear interpolation gives better gradients than Gaussian smoothing in derivative-free optimization“ (joint work with Liyuan Cao, Krzysztof Choromanski and Katya Scheinberg)
June 2019: New paper “Scaling Up Quasi-Newton Algorithms: Communication Efficient Distributed SR1“ (joint work with Majid Jahani, Mohammadreza Nazari, Sergey Rusakov and Martin Takáč)
May 2019: New paper “A Theoretical and Empirical Comparison of Gradient Approximations in Derivative-Free Optimization“ (joint work with Liyuan Cao, Krzysztof Choromanski and Katya Scheinberg)
March 2019: New paper “Limited-Memory BFGS with Displacement Aggregation“ (joint work with Frank E. Curtis and Baoyu Zhou)
March 2019: New paper “Nested Distributed Gradient Methods with Adaptive Quantized Communication“ (joint work with Ermin Wei and Charikleia Iakovidou)
February 2019: Presented in a session organized by Juliane Mueller and Matt Menickelly (Derivative-free and Global Optimization) at the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, Spokane, WA
January 2019: New paper “Quasi-Newton Methods for Deep Learning: Forget the Past, Just Sample“ (joint work with Majid Jahani and Martin Takáč)

2018

December 2018: Our paper “Derivative-Free Optimization of Noisy Functions via Quasi-Newton Methods“ (joint work with Jorge Nocedal and Richard H. Byrd) has been accepted for publication in SIAM Journal on Optimization

November 2018: Presented in a session organized by Lam M. Nguyen (Recent Advances in Optimization Methods for Machine Learning) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ
November 2018: Organized two sessions (Methods for Large Scale Nonlinear and Stochastic Optimization I/II) at the INFORMS Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ
October 2018: Attended the Second TRIPODS PI workshop at the University of California, Santa Cruz – Silicon Valley Campus
October 2018: Our paper “Balancing Communication and Computation in Distributed Optimization“ (joint work with Raghu Bollapragada, Nitish Shirish Keskar and Ermin Wei) has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
September 2018: Joined the ISE department at Lehigh University as a postdoctoral research fellow working with Professors Katya Scheinberg, Frank Curtis and Martin Takáč
August 2018: Presented at the DIMACS/TRIPODS/MOPTA conference at Lehigh University
July 2018: Presented in a session organized by Professor Nocedal (Stochastic and Nonlinear Optimization) at ISMP, Bordeaux, France
March 2018: Started a postdoctoral research fellowship in the IEMS department at Northwestern University working with Professor Nocedal
February 2018: Successfully defended my PhD!