Author name cluster

Barbara E Engelhardt

Possible papers associated with this exact author name in Arrow. This page groups case-insensitive exact name matches and is not a full identity disambiguation profile.

6 papers

1 author row

TMLR Journal 2025 Journal Article

Non-Myopic Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization

Syrine Belakaria
Alaleh Ahmadian
Barbara E Engelhardt
Stefano Ermon
Jana Doppa

We consider the problem of finite-horizon sequential experimental design to solve multi-objective optimization (MOO) of expensive black-box objective functions. This problem arises in many real-world applications, including materials design, where we have a small resource budget to make and evaluate candidate materials in the lab. We solve this problem using the framework of Bayesian optimization (BO) and propose the first set of non-myopic methods for MOO problems. Prior work on non-myopic BO for single-objective problems relies on the Bellman optimality principle to handle the lookahead reasoning process. However, this principle does not hold for most MOO problems because the reward function needs to satisfy some conditions: scalar variable, monotonicity, and additivity. We address this challenge by using hypervolume improvement (HVI) as our scalarization approach, which allows us to use a lower-bound on the Bellman equation to approximate the finite-horizon using a batch expected hypervolume improvement (EHVI) acquisition function (AF) for MOO. Our formulation naturally allows us to use other improvement-based scalarizations and compare their efficacy to HVI. We derive three non-myopic AFs for MOBO: 1) the Nested AF, which is based on the exact computation of the lower bound, 2) the Joint AF, which is a lower bound on the nested AF, and 3) the BINOM AF, which is a fast and approximate variant based on batch multi-objective acquisition functions. Our experiments on multiple diverse real-world MO problems demonstrate that our non-myopic AFs substantially improve performance over the existing myopic AFs for MOBO.

PDF Details

RLC Conference 2024 Conference Paper

Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Multiple Planning Horizons

Jiayu Yao
Weiwei Pan
Finale Doshi-Velez
Barbara E Engelhardt

In this work, we study an inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) problem where the experts are planning *under a shared reward function but with different, unknown planning horizons*. Without the knowledge of discount factors, the reward function has a larger feasible solution set, which makes it harder for existing IRL approaches to identify a reward function. To overcome this challenge, we develop algorithms that can learn a global multi-agent reward function with agent-specific discount factors that reconstruct the expert policies. We characterize the feasible solution space of the reward function and discount factors for both algorithms and demonstrate the generalizability of the learned reward function across multiple domains.

PDF Details

RLJ Journal 2024 Journal Article

Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Multiple Planning Horizons

Jiayu Yao
Weiwei Pan
Finale Doshi-Velez
Barbara E Engelhardt

PDF Details

TMLR Journal 2024 Journal Article

KD-BIRL: Kernel Density Bayesian Inverse Reinforcement Learning

Aishwarya Mandyam
Didong Li
Andrew Jones
Diana Cai
Barbara E Engelhardt

Inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) methods infer an agent's reward function using demonstrations of expert behavior. A Bayesian IRL approach models a distribution over candidate reward functions, capturing a degree of uncertainty in the inferred reward function. This is critical in some applications, such as those involving clinical data. Typically, Bayesian IRL algorithms require large demonstration datasets to ensure posterior concentration, which may not be available in practice. In this work, we incorporate existing domain-specific data to achieve better posterior concentration rates. We study a common setting in clinical and biological applications where we have access to expert demonstrations and known reward functions for a set of training tasks. Our aim is to learn the reward function of a new test task given limited expert demonstrations. Existing Bayesian IRL methods impose restrictions on the form of input data, thus limiting the incorporation of training task data. To better leverage information from training tasks, we introduce kernel density Bayesian inverse reinforcement learning (KD-BIRL). Our approach employs a conditional kernel density estimator, which uses the known reward functions of the training tasks to improve the likelihood estimation across a range of reward functions and demonstration samples. Our empirical results highlight KD-BIRL's faster concentration rate in comparison to baselines, particularly in low test task expert demonstration data regimes. Additionally, we are the first to provide theoretical guarantees of posterior concentration for a Bayesian IRL algorithm. Taken together, this work introduces a principled and theoretically grounded framework that enables Bayesian IRL to be applied across a variety of domains, especially those with limited expert demonstration datasets.

PDF Details

JMLR Journal 2017 Journal Article

Adaptive Randomized Dimension Reduction on Massive Data

Gregory Darnell
Stoyan Georgiev
Sayan Mukherjee
Barbara E Engelhardt

The scalability of statistical estimators is of increasing importance in modern applications. One approach to implementing scalable algorithms is to compress data into a low dimensional latent space using dimension reduction methods. In this paper, we develop an approach for dimension reduction that exploits the assumption of low rank structure in high dimensional data to gain both computational and statistical advantages. We adapt recent randomized low-rank approximation algorithms to provide an efficient solution to principal component analysis (PCA), and we use this efficient solver to improve estimation in large- scale linear mixed models (LMM) for association mapping in statistical genomics. A key observation in this paper is that randomization serves a dual role, improving both computational and statistical performance by implicitly regularizing the covariance matrix estimate of the random effect in an LMM. These statistical and computational advantages are highlighted in our experiments on simulated data and large-scale genomic studies. [abs] [ pdf ][ bib ] &copy JMLR 2017. ( edit, beta )

PDF Details

JMLR Journal 2016 Journal Article

Bayesian group factor analysis with structured sparsity

Shiwen Zhao
Chuan Gao
Sayan Mukherjee
Barbara E Engelhardt

Latent factor models are the canonical statistical tool for exploratory analyses of low-dimensional linear structure for a matrix of $p$ features across $n$ samples. We develop a structured Bayesian group factor analysis model that extends the factor model to multiple coupled observation matrices; in the case of two observations, this reduces to a Bayesian model of canonical correlation analysis. Here, we carefully define a structured Bayesian prior that encourages both element-wise and column-wise shrinkage and leads to desirable behavior on high- dimensional data. In particular, our model puts a structured prior on the joint factor loading matrix, regularizing at three levels, which enables element-wise sparsity and unsupervised recovery of latent factors corresponding to structured variance across arbitrary subsets of the observations. In addition, our structured prior allows for both dense and sparse latent factors so that covariation among either all features or only a subset of features can be recovered. We use fast parameter-expanded expectation-maximization for parameter estimation in this model. We validate our method on simulated data with substantial structure. We show results of our method applied to three high- dimensional data sets, comparing results against a number of state-of-the-art approaches. These results illustrate useful properties of our model, including i) recovering sparse signal in the presence of dense effects; ii) the ability to scale naturally to large numbers of observations; iii) flexible observation- and factor-specific regularization to recover factors with a wide variety of sparsity levels and percentage of variance explained; and iv) tractable inference that scales to modern genomic and text data sizes. [abs] [ pdf ][ bib ] &copy JMLR 2016. ( edit, beta )

PDF Details