Publications by Mark Schmidt

2024

• BlockLLM: Memory-Efficient Adaptation of LLMs by Selecting and Optimizing the Right Coordinate Blocks.
  A. Varshini Ramesh, V. Ganapathiraman, I. Laradji, M. Schmidt. arXiv, 2024. [pdf]

• Why Line Search when you can Plane Search? SO-Friendly Neural Networks allow Per-Iteration Optimization of Learning and Momentum Rates for Every Layer.
  B. Shea, M. Schmdit. arXiv, 2024. [pdf]

• Faster Convergence of Stochastic Accelerated Gradient Descent under Interpolation.
  A. Mishkin, M. Pilanci, M. Schmidt. arXiv, 2024. [pdf]

• Heavy-Tailed Class Imbalance and Why Adam Outperforms Gradient Descent on Language Models.
  F. Kunstner, R. Yadav, A. Milligan, M. Schmidt, A. Bietti. arXiv, 2024. [pdf]

2023

• Searching for Optimal Per-Coordinate Step-sizes with Multidimensional Backtracking.
  F. Kunstner, V. Portella, M. Schmidt, N. Harvey. NeurIPS, 2023. [pdf] [code]

• Don't be so Monotone: Relaxing Stochastic Line Search in Over-Parameterized Models.
  L. Galli, H. Rahut, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS, 2023. [pdf]

• BiSLS/SPS: Auto-tune Step Sizes for Stable Bi-level Optimization.
  C. Fan, G. Choné-Ducasse, M. Schmidt, C. Thrampoulidis. NeurIPS, 2023. [pdf]

• Greedy Newton: Newton's Method with Exact Line Search.
  B.Shea, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS OPT, 2023. [pdf]

• MSL: An Adaptive Momentem-based Stochastic Line-search Framework.
  C.Fan, S. Vaswani, C. Thrampoulidis, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS OPT, 2023. [pdf]

• Variance Reduced Model Based Methods: New rates and adaptive step sizes.
  R. Gower, F. Kunstner, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS OPT, 2023. [pdf]

• Analyzing and Improving Greedy 2-Coordinate Updates for Equality-Constrained Optimization via Steepest Descent in the 1-Norm.
  A. Varshini Ramesh, A. Mishkin, M. Schmidt, Y. Zhou, J. Lavington, J. She. arXiv, 2023. [pdf] [slides]

• Target-based Surrogates for Stochastic Optimization.
  J. Lavington, S. Vaswani, R. Babanezhad, M. Schmidt, N. Le Roux. ICML, 2023. [pdf]

• Simplifying Momentum-based Positive-definite Submanifold Optimization with Applications to Deep Learning.
  W. Lin, V. Duruisseaux, M. Leok, F. Nielsen, M. Khan, M. Schmidt. ICML, 2023. [pdf]

• Noise is not the main factor behind the gap between SGD and Adam on transformers, but sign descent might be.
  F. Kunstner, J. Chen, J. Lavington, M. Schmidt. ICLR, 2023. [pdf] [code]

• Fast Convergence of Random Reshuffling under Over-Parameterization and the Polyak-Lojasiewicz Condition.
  C. Fan, C. Thrampoulidis, M. Schmidt. ECML, 2023. [pdf]

• Optimistic Thompson Sampling-based Algorithms for Episodic Reinforcement Learning.
  B. Hu, T. Zhang, N. Hegde, M. Schmidt. UAI, 2023. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• Predicting DNA kinetics with a truncated continuous-time Markov chain method.
  S. Zolaktaf, F. Dannenberg, M. Schmidt, A. Condon, E. Winfree. Comp Bio & Chem, 2023. [pdf]

2022

• Let's Make Block Coordinate Descent Converge Faster: Faster Greedy Rules, Message-Passing, Active-Set Complexity, and Superlinear Convergence.
  J. Nutini, I. Laradji, M. Schmidt. JMLR, 2022 (submitted 2017). [pdf] [poster] [slides (short)] [slides (long)] [talk] [code]

• Improved Policy Optimization for Online Imitation Learning.
  J.W. Lavington, S. Vaswani, M. Schmidt. CoLLAs, 2022. [pdf]

• SVRG Meet AdaGrad: Painless Variance Reduction.
  B. Dubois-Taine, S. Vaswani, R. Babanezhad, M. Schmidt, S. LaCoste-Julien, MLJ, 2022. [pdf] [code]

2021

• Homeomorphic-Invariance of EM: Non-Asymptotic Convergence in KL Divergence for Exponential Families via Mirror Descent.
  F. Kunstner, R. Kumar, M. Schmidt, AISTATS, 2021 (Best Paper Award). [pdf] [slides]

• Robust Asymmetric Learning in POMDPs.
  A. Warrington, J. Lavington, A. Scibor, M. Schmidt, F. Wood, ICML, 2021. [pdf]

• Tractable structured natural gradient descent using local parameterizations.
  W. Lin, F. Nielsen, M. Khan, M. Schmidt, ICML, 2021. [pdf]

• AutoRetouch: Automatic Professional Face Retouching.
  A. Shafaei, J. Little, M. Schmidt, WACV, 2021. [pdf] [supplemental] [FFHQR Dataset] [video]

• Faster Quasi-Newton Methods for Linear Composition Problems.
  B. Shea, M. Schmidt, NeurIPS OPT, 2021. [pdf]

• An Empirical Study of Non-Uniform Sampling in Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for Continuous Control.
  N. Ioannidis, J. Lavington, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS Deep RL, 2021. [pdf]

• A Closer Look at Gradient Estimators with Reinforcement Learning as Inference.
  J. Lavington, M. Teng, M. Schmidt, F. Wood. NeurIPS Deep RL, 2021. [pdf]

2020

• Adaptive Gradient Methods Converge Faster with Over-Parameterization (but you should do a line-search).
  S. Vaswani, F. Kunstner, I. Laradji, S.Y. Meng, M. Schmidt, S. LaCoste-Julien, arXiv, 2020. [pdf]

• Variance-Reduced Methods for Machine Learning.
  R. Gower, M. Schmidt, F. Bach, P. Richtarik, Proc IEEE, 2020. [pdf]

• Regret Bounds without Lipschitz Continuity: Online Learning with Relative-Lipschitz Losses.
  Y. Zhou, V. Portella, M. Schmidt, N. Harvey, NeurIPS, 2020. [pdf]

• Fast and Furious Convergence: Stochastic Second Order Methods under Interpolation.
  S.Y. Meng, S. Vaswani, I. Laradji, M. Schmidt, S. Lacoste-Julien. AISTATS, 2020. [pdf] [slides] [video] [code]

• Combining Bayesian Optimization and Lipschitz Optimization.
  M. Ahmed, S. Vaswani, M. Schmidt. MLJ, 2020. [pdf] [slides]

• Handling the Positive-Definite Constraint in the Bayesian Learning Rule.
  W. Lin, M. Schmidt, M. Khan. ICML, 2020. [pdf] [slides] [video] [code]

• Instance Segmentation with Point Supervision.
  I. Laradji, N. Rostamzadeh, P. Pinheiro, D. Vazquez, M. Schmidt. ICIP, 2020. [pdf]

• A Multiagent Model of Efficient and Sustainable Financial Markets.
  B. Shea, M. Schmidt, M. Kamgarpour. NeurIPS ML for Economic Policy, 2020. [pdf]

2019

• Painless Stochastic Gradient: Interpolation, Line-Search, and Convergence Rates.
  S. Vaswani, A. Mishkin, I. Laradji, M. Schmidt, G. Gidel, S. LaCoste-Julien. NeurIPS, 2019. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [video] [code]

• "Active-set complexity" of proximal-gradient: How long does it take to find the sparsity pattern?.
  J. Nutini, M. Schmidt, W. Hare. OPTL, 2019. [pdf] [poster] [slides]

• A Less Biased Evaluation of Out-of-distribution Sample Detectors (Formerly "Does Your Model Know the Digit 6 is Not a Cat?").
  A. Shafaei, M. Schmidt, J. Little. BMVC, 2019. [pdf] [poster] [code] [video]

• Where are the Masks: Instance Segmentation with Image-Level Supervision.
  I. Laradji, D. Vazquez, M. Schmidt. BMVC, 2019. [pdf] [poster]

• Fast and Faster Convergence of SGD for Over-Parameterized Models (and an Accelerated Percepton).
  S. Vaswani, F. Bach, M. Schmidt. AISTATS, 2019. [pdf] [poster]

• Are we there yet? Manifold identification of gradient-related proximal methods.
  Y. Sun, H. Jeong, J. Nutini, M. Schmidt. AISTATS, 2019. [pdf] [poster]

• Distributed Maximization of Submodular plus Diversity Functions for Multi-label Feature Selection on Huge Datasets.
  M. Ghadiri, M. Schmidt. AISTATS, 2019. [pdf] [poster]

• Fast and Simple Natural-Gradient Variational Inference with Mixture of Exponential-family Approximations.
  W. Lin, M. Khan, M. Schmidt. ICML, 2019. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• Efficient Parameter Estimation for DNA Kinetics Modeled as Continuous-Time Markov Chains.
  S. Zolaktaf, F. Dannenberg, E. Winfree, A. Bouchard-Cote, M. Schmidt, A. Condon. DNA, 2019. [pdf] [slides] [code]

• Efficient Deep Gaussian Process Models for Variable-Sized Input.
  I. Laradji, M. Schmidt, V. Pavlovic, M. Kim. IJCNN, 2019. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• Newton-Laplace Updates for Block Coordinate Descent.
  S.Y. Meng, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS WiML, 2019. [pdf] [poster]

2018

• Where are the Blobs: Counting by Localization with Point Supervision.
  I. Laradji, N. Rostamzadeh, P. Pinheiro, D. Vazquez, M. Schmidt. ECCV, 2018. [pdf] [poster] [video 1] [video 2] [code]

• Online Learning Rate Adaptation with Hypergradient Descent.
  A. Baydin, R. Cornish, D. Rubio, M. Schmidt, F. Wood. ICLR, 2018. [pdf][poster][code]

• SLANG: Fast Structured Covariance Approximations for Bayesian Deep Learning with Natural Gradient.
  A. Mishkin, F. Kunstner, D. Nielson, M. Khan, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS, 2018. [pdf] [poster] [video] [code]

• MASAGA: A Linearly-Convergent Stochastic First-Order Method for Optimization on Manifolds.
  R. Babanezhad, I. Laradji, A. Shafaei, M. Schmidt. ECML, 2018. [pdf] [code]

• New Insights into Bootstrapping for Bandits.
  S. Vaswani, B. Kveton, Z. Wen, A. Rao, M. Schmidt, Y. Abbasi-Yadkori. arXiv, 2018. [pdf]

2017

• Minimizing Finite Sums with the Stochastic Average Gradient.
  M. Schmidt, N. Le Roux, F. Bach. MAPR, 2017 (submitted 2013) (2018 Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization). [pdf] [slides] [proof scripts] [talk] [code]

• Model-Independent Online Learning for Influence Maximization.
  S. Vaswani, B. Kveton, Z. Wen, M. Ghavamzadeh, L. Lakshmanan, M. Schmidt. ICML, 2017. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [code]

• Horde of Bandits using Gaussian Markov Random Fields.
  S. Vaswani, M. Schmidt, L. Lakshmanan. AISTATS, 2017. [pdf] [poster] [slides]

• Inferring Parameters for an Elementary Step Model of DNA Structure Kinetics with Locally Context-Dependent Arrhenius Rates.
  S. Zolaktaf, F. Dannenberg, X. Rudelis, A. Condon, J. Schaeffer, M. Schmidt, C. Thachuk, E. Winfree. DNA, 2017 (Best Student Paper Award). [pdf] [slides] [code]

2016

• Linear Convergence of Gradient and Proximal-Gradient Methods under the Polyak-Lojasiewicz Condition.
  H. Karimi, J. Nutini, M. Schmidt. ECML, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [addendum]

• Play and Learn: Using Video Games to Train Computer Vision Models.
  A. Shafaei, J. Little, M. Schmidt. BMVC, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [MIT Technology Review]

• Convergence Rates for Greedy Kaczmarz Algorithms, and Faster Randomized Kaczmarz Rules Using the Orthogonality Graph.
  J. Nutini, B. Sepehry, I. Laradji, M. Schmidt, H. Koepke, A. Virani. UAI, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• Faster Stochastic Variational Inference using Proximal-Gradient Methods with General Divergence Functions.
  M. Khan, R. Babanezhad, W. Lin, M. Schmidt, M. Sugiyama. UAI, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• Do we need "Harmless" Bayesian Optimization and "First-Order" Bayesian Optimization?
  M.O. Ahmed, B. Shahriari, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS BayesOPT, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [slides]

• Fast Patch-based Style Transfer of Arbitrary Styles.
  T.Q. Chen, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS Constructive ML, 2016. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [code/videos]

2015

• Coordinate descent converges faster with the Gauss-Southwell rule than random selection.
  J. Nutini, M. Schmidt, I. Laradji, M. Friedlander, H. Koepke. ICML, 2015. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [talk] [code]

• Stop Wasting My Gradients: Practical SVRG.
  R. Babanezhad, M.O. Ahmed, A. Virani, M. Schmidt, J. Konecny, S. Sallinen. NeurIPS, 2015. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [code]

• Non-Uniform Stochastic Average Gradient Method for Training Conditional Random Fields.
  M. Schmidt, R. Babanezhad, M.O. Ahmed, A. Defazio, A. Clifton, A. Sarkar. AISTATS, 2015. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [code]

• Influence Maximization with Bandits.
  S. Vaswani, L. Lakshmanan, M. Schmidt. NeurIPS Networks, 2015. [pdf] [poster]

• Hierarchical Maximum-Margin Clustering.
  G.-T. Zhou, S.J. Hwang, M. Schmidt, L. Sigal, G. Mori. arXiv, 2015. [pdf]

2014

• Convex Optimization for Big Data: Scalable, randomized, and parallel algorithms for big data analytics.
  V. Cevher, S. Becker. M. Schmidt. IEEE SPM, 2014. [pdf]

• Convergence Rate of Stochastic Gradient with Constant Step Size.
  M. Schmidt. UBC Technical Report, 2014. [pdf]

2013

• Block-Coordinate Frank-Wolfe Optimization for Structural SVMs.
  S. Lacoste-Julien, M. Jaggi, M. Schmidt, P. Pletscher. ICML, 2013. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [code]

• Fast Convergence of Stochastic Gradient Descent under a Strong Growth Condition.
  M. Schmidt, N. Le Roux. arXiv, 2013. [pdf]

2012

• A Stochastic Gradient Method with an Exponential Convergence Rate for Finite Training Sets.
  N. Le Roux, M. Schmidt, F. Bach. NeurIPS, 2012 (2018 Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization). [pdf] [poster] [slides] [talk] [code] [extended version]

• Hybrid Deterministic-Stochastic Methods for Data Fitting.
  M. Friedlander, M. Schmidt. SISC, 2012. [pdf] [slides] [code] [addendum]

• A simpler approach to obtaining an O(1/t) convergence rate for projected stochastic subgradient descent.
  S. Lacoste-Julien, M. Schmidt, F. Bach. arXiv, 2012. [pdf] [code]

• On Sparse, Spectral and Other Parameterizations of Binary Probabilistic Models.
  D. Buchmann, M. Schmidt, S. Mohamed, D. Poole, N. de Freitas. AISTATS, 2012. [pdf] [poster] [code].

2011

• Convergence Rates of Inexact Proximal-Gradient Methods for Convex Optimization.
  M. Schmidt, N. Le Roux, F. Bach. NeurIPS, 2011. [pdf] [poster] [slides] [talk] [code]

• Projected Newton-type Methods in Machine Learning.
  M. Schmidt, D. Kim, S. Sra. Optimization for Machine Learning (S. Sra, S. Nowozin, S.Wright), MIT Press 2011. [pdf] [slides] [talk] [code]

• Generalized Fast Approximate Energy Minimization via Graph Cuts: Alpha-Expansion Beta-Shrink Moves.
  M. Schmidt, K. Alahari. UAI, 2011. [pdf] [poster] [code]

• A hybrid stochastic-deterministic optimization method for waveform inversion.
  T. van Leeuwen, M. Schmidt, M. Friedlander, F. Herrmann EAGE, 2011. [pdf] [slides] [code]

2010

• Graphical Model Structure Learning with L1-Regularization.
  M. Schmidt. PhD Thesis, 2010. [pdf] [slides] [code]

• Convex Structure Learning in Log-Linear Models: Beyond Pairwise Potentials.
  M. Schmidt, K. Murphy. AISTATS, 2010. [pdf] [slides] [talk] [code]

• Modeling annotator expertise: Learning when everybody knows a bit of something.
  Y. Yan, R. Rosales, G. Fung, M. Schmidt, G. Hermosillo, L. Bogoni, L. Moy, J. Dy. AISTATS, 2010. [pdf] [talk]

• Causal Learning without DAGs.
  D. Duvenaud, D. Eaton, K. Murphy, M. Schmidt. JMLR W&CP, 2010. [pdf] [poster] [talk] [code]

2009

• Optimizing Costly Functions with Simple Constraints: A Limited-Memory Projected Quasi-Newton Algorithm.
  M. Schmidt, E. van den Berg, M. Friedlander, K. Murphy. AISTATS, 2009 (Best Paper Award) [pdf] [slides] [code] [examples]

• Group Sparse Priors for Covariance Estimation.
  B. Marlin, M. Schmidt, K. Murphy. UAI, 2009. [pdf] [poster]

• Modeling Discrete Interventional Data using Directed Cyclic Graphical Models.
  M. Schmidt, K. Murphy. UAI, 2009. [pdf] [slides] [code] [addendum]

• Increased Discrimination in Level Set Methods with Embedded Conditional Random Fields.
  D. Cobzas, M. Schmidt. CVPR, 2009. [pdf] [poster]

• Optimization Methods for L1-Regularization.
  M. Schmidt, G. Fung, R. Rosales. UBC Technical Report, 2009. [pdf] [code] [examples]

2008

• Structure Learning in Random Fields for Heart Motion Abnormality Detection.
  M. Schmidt, K. Murphy, G. Fung, R. Rosales. CVPR, 2008. [pdf] [poster] [code] [addendum]

• Group Sparsity via Linear-Time Projection.
  E. van den Berg, M. Schmidt. M. Friedlander, K. Murphy. UBC Technical Report, 2008. [pdf] [code]

• An interior-point stochastic approximation method and an L1-regularized delta rule.
  P. Carbonetto, M. Schmidt, N. de Freitas. NeurIPS, 2008. [pdf] [

2007

• Fast Optimization Methods for L1-Regularization: A Comparative Study and 2 New Approaches.
  M. Schmidt, G. Fung, R. Rosales. ECML, 2007. [pdf] [slides] [talk] [code] [examples] [addendum] [extended version]

• Learning Graphical Model Structure using L1-Regularization Paths.
  M. Schmidt, A. Niculescu-Mizil, K Murphy. AAAI, 2007. [pdf] [code] [addendum]

• 3D Variational Brain Tumor Segmentation using a High Dimensional Feature Set.
  D. Cobzas, N. Birkbeck, M. Schmidt, M. Jagersand, A. Murtha. MMBIA, 2007. [pdf] [online material]

2006

• Accelerated Training of Conditional Random Fields with Stochastic Gradient Methods.
  S. Vishwanathan, N. Schraudolph, M. Schmidt, K. Murphy. ICML, 2006. [pdf] [1d code] [2d code] [slides]

• A Classification-based Glioma Diffusion Model Using MRI Data.
  M. Morris, R. Greiner, J. Sander, A. Murtha, M. Schmidt. CAI, 2006. [pdf]

2005

• Segmenting Brain Tumors using Conditional Random Fields and Support Vector Machines.
  C.-H. Lee, M. Schmidt, A. Murtha, A. Bistritz, J. Sander, R. Greiner. CVBIA, 2005. [pdf] [poster]

• Segmenting Brain Tumors using Alignment-Based Features.
  M. Schmidt, I. Levner, R. Greiner, A. Murtha, A. Bistritz. ICMLA, 2005. [pdf]

• Support Vector Random Fields for Spatial Classification.
  C.-H. Lee, R. Greiner, M. Schmidt. PKDD, 2005. [pdf] [presentation]

• Automatic Brain Tumor Segmentation.
  M. Schmidt. MSc Thesis, 2005. [pdf]

Notes

• Some Notes on Writing (2020)

• Convex Optimization Cheat Sheet (2016)

• Argmax and Max Calculus (2016)

• Randomized Kaczmarz (2015)

• Optimization for Machine Learning (2015)

• Convergence Rate of Proximal-Gradient with a General Step-Size (2014)

• Conditional Random Fields with Latent Variables (2014)

• Convex Optimization (2013)

• Big-N Problems (2012)

• Batching and Shrinking with the Hinge Loss (2012)

• Convex Optimization (MLSS Practical Sessions) (2011)

• Convergence Rates (2010)

• Singular Value Thresholding (2010)

• Generalized Interventional Potentials (2010)

• Polar Cones (2009)

• Linear Algebra (2009)

• Structural SVMs (2009)

• Lasso Duals (2008)

• Projection onto L1,Q-Norm Cones (2008)

• LARS-MLE, L1PC (2007)

Student Theses and Essays

• Computationally Efficient Geometric Methods for Optimization and Inference in Machine Learning
  W. Lin, PhD Thesis, 2023. [pdf]

• Optimistic Thompson Sampling: Strategic Exploration in Bandits and Reinforcement Learning
  T. Zhang, MSc Thesis, 2023. [pdf]

• A Study of the Edge of the Stability in Deep Learning
  C. Fox, MSc Thesis, 2023. [pdf]

• Algorithm Configuration Landscapes: Analysis and Exploitation
  Y. Pushak, PhD Thesis, 2022. (CS-Can/Info-Can Distinguished Dissertation Award) [pdf]

• Subspace optimization for machine learning
  B. Shea, MSc Thesis, 2021. [pdf]

• Pragmatic investigations of applied deep learning in computer vision applications
  A. Shafaei, PhD Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Efficiently estimating kinetics of interacting nucleic acid strands modeled as continuous-time Markov chains
  S. Zolaktaf, PhD Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Regret Bounds without Lipschitz Continuity: Online Learning with Relative-Lipschitz Losses
  Y. Zhou, MSc Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Interpolation, Growth Conditions, and Stochastic Gradient Descent
  A. Mishkin, MSc Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Stochastic Second-Order Optimization for Over-parameterized Machine Learning Models
  S.Y. Meng, MSc Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Where are the objects? : weakly supervised methods for counting, localization and segmentation
  I. Laradji, PhD Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Investigating the impact of normalizing flows on latent variable machine translation
  M. Przystupa, MSc Thesis, 2020. [pdf]

• Practical optimization methods for machine learning models
  R. Babanezhad, PhD Thesis, 2019. [pdf]

• Beyond submodular maximization : one-sided smoothness and meta-submodularity
  M. Ghadiri, MSc Thesis, 2019. [pdf]

• Structured Bandits and Applications: Exploiting Problem Structure for Better Decision-making under Uncertainty
  S. Vaswani, PhD Thesis, 2019. [pdf]

• Practical Optimization for Structured Machine Learning Problems
  M. Ahmed, PhD Thesis, 2018. [pdf]

• Greed is Good: Greedy Optimization Methods for Large-Scale Structured Problems
  J. Nutini, PhD Thesis, 2018. (CS-Can/Info-Can Distinguished Dissertation Award) [pdf]

• Deep kernel mean embeddings for generative modeling and feedforward style transfer
  T.Q. Chen, MSc Thesis, 2017. [pdf]

• Finding a Maximum Weight Sequence with Dependency Constraints
  B. Sepehry, MSc Essay, 2016. [pdf] [slides]