Volkan Cevher
Associate Professor
+41 21 693 11 01
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EPFL STI IEL LIONS
ELE 233 (Bâtiment ELE)
Station 11
1015 Lausanne
+41 21 693 11 01
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Office:
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Web site: Web site: https://lions.epfl.ch
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Web site: Web site: https://cce.epfl.ch/
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+41 21 693 11 01
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Web site: Web site: https://ae.epfl.ch/
Fields of expertise
Optimization
Reinforcement Learning
Deep learning
Biography
Volkan Cevher received the B.Sc. (valedictorian) in electrical engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, in 1999 and the Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA in 2005. He was a Research Scientist with the University of Maryland, College Park, from 2006-2007 and also with Rice University in Houston, TX, from 2008-2009. He was also a Faculty Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University from 2010-2020. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and an Amazon Scholar. His research interests include machine learning, optimization theory and methods, and automated control. Dr. Cevher is an IEEE Fellow ('24), an ELLIS fellow, and was the recipient of the ICML AdvML Best Paper Award in 2023, Google Faculty Research award in 2018, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2016, a Best Paper Award at CAMSAP in 2015, a Best Paper Award at SPARS in 2009, and an ERC CG in 2016 as well as an ERC StG in 2011.Publications
Infoscience publications
Selected Publications
Learning to Remove Cuts in Integer Linear Programming
2024. 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024), Vienna, Austria, July 21-27, 2024.Graph generative deep learning models with an application to circuit topologies
Lausanne, EPFL, 2024. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9020.Improving SAM Requires Rethinking its Optimization Formulation
2024. 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024), Vienna, Austria, July 21-27, 2024.Robust NAS under adversarial training: benchmark, theory, and beyond
2024. 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024.High-Dimensional Kernel Methods under Covariate Shift: Data-Dependent Implicit Regularization
2024. 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024.Generalization of Scaled Deep ResNets in the Mean-Field Regime
2024. 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024.Efficient Continual Finite-Sum Minimization
2024. 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024.Revisiting Character-level Adversarial Attacks for Language Models
2024. 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024), Vienna, Austria, July 21-27, 2024.Efficient local linearity regularization to overcome catastrophic overfitting
2024. 12th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024), Vienna, Austria, May 7-11, 2024.Imitation Learning in Discounted Linear MDPs without exploration assumptions
2024. 41st International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2024), Vienna, Austria, July 21-27, 2024.On the Generalization of Stochastic Gradient Descent with Momentum
Journal Of Machine Learning Research. 2024-01-01.Infusing structured knowledge priors in neural models for sample-efficient symbolic reasoning
Lausanne, EPFL, 2024. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-10642.Optimization Algorithms for Decentralized, Distributed and Collaborative Machine Learning
Lausanne, EPFL, 2024. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9927.Robust machine learning for neuroscientific inference
Lausanne, EPFL, 2024. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-12067.Stable Nonconvex-Nonconcave Training via Linear Interpolation
2023-09-21. Thirty-seventh Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, December 10-16, 2023.Efficient Online Clustering with Moving Costs
2023. 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), New Orlean, USA, December 10-16. 2023.Maximum Independent Set: Self-Training through Dynamic Programming
2023. 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023)., New Orlean, USA, December 10-16. 2023.Alternation makes the adversary weaker in two-player games
2023. 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), New Orlean, USA, December 10-16. 2023.Initialization Matters: Privacy-Utility Analysis of Overparameterized Neural Networks
2023. 37th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, New Orleans, USA, December 10-16. 2023.Sample Complexity Bounds for Score-Matching: Causal Discovery and Generative Modeling
2023. 37th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, New Orleans, USA, December 10-16. 2023.On the Convergence of Encoder-only Shallow Transformers
2023. 37th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, New Orleans, USA, December 10-16. 2023.Regularization of polynomial networks for image recognition
2023-01-01. IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Vancouver, CANADA, JUN 17-24, 2023. p. 16123-16132. DOI : 10.1109/CVPR52729.2023.01547.Semi Bandit Dynamics in Congestion Games: Convergence to Nash Equilibrium and No-Regret Guarantees.
2023. 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July, 23-29, 2023.Benign Overfitting in Deep Neural Networks under Lazy Training
2023. 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July, 23-29, 2023.What can online reinforcement learning with function approximation benefitfrom general coverage conditions
2023. 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July, 23-29, 2023.Universal and adaptive methods for robust stochastic optimization
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9077.Multi-agent Learning with Privacy Guarantees
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9939.Robust Training and Verification of Deep Neural Networks
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9223.Text Representation Learning for Low Cost Natural Language Understanding
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9913.Adversarial Training Should Be Cast As a Non-Zero-Sum Game
2023When do Minimax-fair Learning and Empirical Risk Minimization Coincide?
2023. 40th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July 23-29, 2023.Federated Learning under Covariate Shifts with Generalization Guarantees
Transactions on Machine Learning Research. 2023.Augmented Lagrangian Methods for Provable and Scalable Machine Learning
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9613.Regularization of polynomial networks for image recognition
2023. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference (CVPR), Vancouver, Canada, 18-22 June, 2023.Improving Generalization of Pretrained Language Models
Lausanne, EPFL, 2023. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-8664.Distributed Extra-Gradient With Optimal Complexity And Communication Guarantees
2023. 11th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Kigali, Rwanda, May 1-5, 2023.Finding Actual Descent Directions For Adversarial Training
2023. 11th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Kigali, Rwanda, May 1-5, 2023.DiGress: Discrete Denoising diffusion for graph generation
2023. 11th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Kigali, Rwanda, May 1-5, 2023.Solving stochastic weak Minty variational inequalities without increasing batch size
11th International Conference on Learning Representations ICLR2023, Kigali, Rwanda, May 1-5, 2023.Revisiting adversarial training for the worst-performing class
Transactions on Machine Learning Research. 2023.A Natural Actor-Critic Framework for Zero-Sum Markov Games
2022. 39th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, July 17-23, 2022.UNDERGRAD: A Universal Black-Box Optimization Method with Almost Dimension-Free Convergence Rate Guarantees
2022. 39th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, July 17-23, 2022.No-regret learning in games with noisy feedback: Faster rates and adaptivity via learning rate separation
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 9, 2022.Adaptive Stochastic Variance Reduction for Non-convex Finite-Sum Minimization
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, Louisianna, USA, November 28-December 9, 2022.Extra Newton: A First Approach to Noise-Adaptive Accelerated Second-Order Methods
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, Louisianna, USA, November 28-December 9, 2022.Extrapolation and Spectral Bias of Neural Nets with Hadamard Product: a Polynomial Net Study
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Predicting in Uncertain Environments: Methods for Robust Machine Learning
Lausanne, EPFL, 2022. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9118.Generalization Properties of NAS under Activation and Skip Connection Search
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems - NeurIPS 2022, New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Robustness in deep learning: The good (width), the bad (depth), and the ugly (initialization)
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems - NeurIPS 2022, New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.On the Double Descent of Random Features Models Trained with SGD
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2022), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Understanding Deep Neural Function Approximation in Reinforcement Learning via ϵ-Greedy Exploration
2022. Thirty-sixth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems - NeurIPS 2022, New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Proximal Point Imitation Learning
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Identifiability and Generalizability from Multiple Experts in Inverse Reinforcement Learning
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.Sound and Complete Verification of Polynomial Networks
2022. 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, USA, November 28 - December 3, 2022.On The Convergence Of Stochastic Primal-Dual Hybrid Gradient
Siam Journal On Optimization. 2022-01-01. DOI : 10.1137/19M1296252.Score Matching Enables Causal Discovery of Nonlinear Additive Noise Models
2022. 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Baltimore, Maryland, USA, July 17-23, 2022.Learning to sample in Cartesian MRI
Lausanne, EPFL, 2022. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9981.A 16-Channel Neural Recording System-on-Chip With CHT Feature Extraction Processor in 65-nm CMOS
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits. 2022. DOI : 10.1109/JSSC.2022.3161296.Faster One-Sample Stochastic Conditional Gradient Method for Composite Convex Minimization
2022. 25th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS 2022), [ Virtual only] Valencia, Spain, March 28-30, 2022.High Probability Bounds for a Class of Nonconvex Algorithms with AdaGrad Stepsize
2022. 10th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Virtual, April 25-29, 2022.Controlling the Complexity and Lipschitz Constant improves Polynomial Nets
2022. 10th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Virtual, April 25-29, 2022.The spectral bias of polynomial neural networks
2022. 10th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Virtual, April 25-29, 2022.Escaping limit cycles: Global convergence for constrained nonconvex-nonconcave minimax problems
2022. 10th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2022), Virtual, April 25-29, 2022.A Newton Frank-Wolfe method for constrained self-concordant minimization
Journal Of Global Optimization. 2022. DOI : 10.1007/s10898-021-01105-z.Forward-reflected-backward method with variance reduction
Computational Optimization and Applications. 2021-08-19. DOI : 10.1007/s10589-021-00305-3.A 16-Channel Wireless Neural Recording System-on-Chip with CHT Feature Extraction Processor in 65nm CMOS
2021-05-17. 2021 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), Virtual, April 25-30, 2021. DOI : 10.1109/CICC51472.2021.9431458.An Optimal-Storage Approach to Semidefinite Programming Using Approximate Complementarity
Siam Journal On Optimization. 2021-01-01. DOI : 10.1137/19M1244603.A Plug-and-Play Deep Image Prior
2021. International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2021), Toronto, Canada, June 6-11, 2021. DOI : 10.1109/ICASSP39728.2021.9414879.Sifting through the Noise: Universal First-Order Methods for Stochastic Variational Inequalities
2021. NeurIPS 2021 : Thirty-fifth Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, Sydney, Australia [Virtual only], December 6-14, 2021.Convergence of adaptive algorithms for constrained weakly convex optimization
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.STORM+: Fully Adaptive SGD with Momentum for Nonconvex Optimization
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.A first-order primal-dual method with adaptivity to local smoothness
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.Robust Inverse Reinforcement Learning under Transition Dynamics Mismatch
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.The Effect of the Intrinsic Dimension on the Generalization of Quadratic Classifiers
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.Subquadratic Overparameterization for Shallow Neural Networks
2021. 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021), Sydney, Australia, December 6-14, 2021.Regret Minimization in Stochastic Non-Convex Learning via a Proximal-Gradient Approach
2021-01-01. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), ELECTR NETWORK, Jul 18-24, 2021.Asynchronous sar adc with unit length capacitors and constant common mode monotonic switching
WO2021161163 . 2021.Adaptation in Stochastic Algorithms: From Nonsmooth Optimization to Min-Max Problems and Beyond
Lausanne, EPFL, 2021. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-8120.Resource Trade-Offs in Circuits and Systems: from Neurotechnology to Communications
Lausanne, EPFL, 2021. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-9082.Kernel Conjugate Gradient Methods with Random Projections
Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis. 2021. DOI : 10.1016/j.acha.2021.05.004.The Limits of Min-Max Optimization Algorithms: Convergence to Spurious Non-Critical Sets
2021. 38th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2021), Online, July 18-24, 2021. p. 4337-4348.A reflected forward-backward splitting method for monotone inclusions involving Lipschitzian operators
Set-valued and Variational analysis. 2021. DOI : 10.1007/s11228-020-00542-4.Scalable Semidefinite Programming
SIAM Journal on Mathematics of Data Science. 2021. DOI : 10.1137/19M1305045.An Introductory Guide to Fano's Inequality with Applications in Statistical Estimation
Information-Theoretic Methods in Data Science; Cambridge University Press, 2021. p. 487-528.Robust Reinforcement Learning via Adversarial training with Langevin Dynamics
2020-11-05An AC-Coupled Wideband Neural Recording Front-End With Sub-1 mm2×fJ/conv-step Efficiency and 0.97 NEF
IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters. 2020-08-04. DOI : 10.1109/LSSC.2020.3013993.Machine Learning From Distributed, Streaming Data [From the Guest Editors]
Ieee Signal Processing Magazine. 2020-05-01. DOI : 10.1109/MSP.2020.2972654.Optimization for Reinforcement Learning: From a single agent to cooperative agents
Ieee Signal Processing Magazine. 2020-05-01. DOI : 10.1109/MSP.2020.2976000.Lipschitz constant estimation for Neural Networks via sparse polynomial optimization
2020-04-26. 8th International Conference on Learning Representations, Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA, April 26-30, 2020.On the Almost Sure Convergence of Stochastic Gradient Descent in Non-Convex Problems
2020. 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), Virtual, December 6-12, 2020.Convergence without Convexity: Sampling, Optimization, and Games
Lausanne, EPFL, 2020. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-10349.Optimal Convergence for Distributed Learning with Stochastic Gradient Methods and Spectral Algorithms
Journal of Machine Learning Research. 2020.Random extrapolation for primal-dual coordinate descent
2020. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2020), Online, July 13-18, 2020.Conditional gradient methods for stochastically constrained convex minimization
2020. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), virtual, July 12-18, 2020.Efficient Proximal Mapping of the 1-path-norm of Shallow Networks
2020. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Virtual, July 13-18, 2020.A new regret analysis for Adam-type algorithms
2020. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICLM 2020), Virtual, July 13-18, 2020.Double-Loop Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm
2020. 37th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICLM 2020), Virtual, July 12-18, 2020.Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Learning
Lausanne, EPFL, 2020. DOI : 10.5075/epfl-thesis-10012.Scalable Learning-Based Sampling Optimization For Compressive Dynamic MRI
2020. International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Barcelona, Spain, May 4-8, 2020. p. 8584-8588. DOI : 10.1109/ICASSP40776.2020.9053345.Convergences of Regularized Algorithms and Stochastic Gradient Methods with Random Projections
Journal of Machine Learning Research. 2020.Teaching & PhD
Teaching
Electrical and Electronics Engineering