Ali Kavis

Ali Kavis

Postdoctoral Fellow at UT Austin

About me

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at UT Austin, affiliated with the IFML. I have obtained my PhD degree from EPFL in August 2023. My research focuses on developing universal and parameter-free algorithms for solving stochastic optimization problems. My interests range from first-order minimization problems to second and higher-order methods, as well as their extensions to variational inequalities, games and min-max optimization.

Selected Publications:

  • Advancing the lower bounds: An accelerated, stochastic, second-order method with optimal adaptation to inexactness

    A. Agafonov, D. Kamzolov, A. Gasnikov, A. Kavis, K. Antonakopoulos, V. Cevher, M. Takáč. ICLR 2024.

  • Universal Gradient Methods for Stochastic Convex Optimization

    A. Rodomanov, A. Kavis, Y. Wu, K. Antonakopoulos, V. Cevher. arXiv.

  • Alternation makes the adversary weaker in two-player games

    V. Cevher, A. Cutkosky, A. Kavis, G. Piliouras, S. Skoulakis, L. Viano. NeurIPS 2023.

  • Adaptive Stochastic Variance Reduction for Non-convex Finite-Sum Minimization

    A. Kavis*, S. Skoulakis*, K. Antonakopoulos, L. T. Dadi, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2022.

  • Extra-Newton: A First Approach to Noise-Adaptive Accelerated Second-Order Methods

    K. Antonakopoulos*, A. Kavis*, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2022.

  • High Probability Bounds for a Class of Non-convex Algorithms with AdaGrad Stepsize

    A. Kavis, K. Y. Levy, V. Cevher. ICLR 2022.

  • STORM+: Fully Adaptive SGD with Recursive Momentum for Nonconvex Optimization

    K. Y. Levy, A. Kavis, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2021.

  • Sifting through the noise: Universal first-order methods for stochastic variational inequalities

    K. Antonakopoulos, T. Pethick, A. Kavis, P. Mertikopoulos, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2021.

  • On the almost sure convergence of stochastic gradient descent in non-convex problems

    P. Mertikopoulos, N. Hallak, A. Kavis, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2020.

  • Double-Loop Unadjusted Langevin Algorithm

    P. T. Y. Rolland, A. Eftekhari, A. Kavis, V. Cevher. ICML 2020.

  • UniXGrad: A Universal, Adaptive Algorithm with Optimal Guarantees for Constrained Optimization

    A. Kavis∗, K. Y. Levy∗, F. Bach, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2019.

  • Efficient learning of smooth probability functions from Bernoulli tests with guarantees

    P. T. Y. Rolland, A. Kavis, A. Immer, A. Singla, V. Cevher. ICML 2019.

  • Mirrored Langevin Dynamics

    Y. Hsieh, A. Kavis, P. Rolland, V. Cevher. NeurIPS 2018.