The paper investigates nonlinear dimensionality reduction for Bayesian optimisation (BO) by transforming high‑dimensional black‑box optimisation problems into a sequence of low‑dimensional latent‑space BO (LSBO) tasks. It extends earlier linear embedding approaches by using variational autoencoders (VAEs), deep metric loss, and adaptive retraining to better capture nonlinear structure, and couples LSBO with sequential domain reduction (SDR‑LSBO) to progressively narrow search domains. Experiments on GPU‑accelerated BoTorch with Matérn‑5/2 Gaussian‑process surrogates show that VAE‑based LSBO outperforms adaptive linear embeddings, and the authors provide a theoretical analysis of latent‑space error versus representation gap under PAC‑Bayes conditions.
By Luo Long, Coralia Cartis, Paz Fink Shustin
arXiv:2610.22763v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Bayesian optimization (BO) over discrete spaces is challenging due to missing gradients and the sparsity of valid solutions. Latent-space BO sidesteps...
By Tommaso Ancilli, Thomas Wedenig, Henry Moss, Robert Peharz
The paper introduces a new Bayesian optimization approach tailored for generative models used in de novo discovery pipelines. By employing a linear surrogate model constrained to a spherical domain—where high‑dimensional latent vectors naturally concentrate—the authors derive nearly closed‑form solutions for both surrogate modeling and acquisition, achieving at least a 100‑fold speedup over existing methods. This acceleration enables Bayesian optimization to be used as a practical drop‑in component in pipelines that previously found it too slow to consider.
By Donney Fan, Colin Doumont, Aleksandra Kalisz, Paul Duckworth, Jacob R. Gardner, Henry Moss, Geoff Pleiss
arXiv:2607. 29225v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Bayesian Optimization (BO) is widely adopted for data-efficient optimization in scientific and engineering applications, yet its computational cost is rarely evaluated alongside optimization performance.
By Panagiotis Krokidas, Christoforos Rekatsinas, Vassilis Sioros, Grigorios M. Chatziathanasiou, Efi-Maria Papia, George Giannakopoulos
arXiv:2607. 23404v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Self-driving laboratories increasingly rely on multi-fidelity Bayesian optimization (MFBO) to balance cheap, approximate evaluations against scarce, expensive ones, with a predictive surrogate at its core.
By Jaewook Lee, Ethan Errington, Christian D. Lorenz, Miao Guo
BoLT is a new benchmark designed to make black-box optimization research for large language model (LLM) tasks more accessible. It presents a suite of realistic LLM optimization problems—covering multi‑fidelity, multi‑objective, heteroscedastic noise, and high‑dimensional search spaces—grounded in thousands of real experiments and represented by lightweight surrogate models. The authors evaluate a wide range of Bayesian and other black‑box optimization methods on BoLT, finding that some BO techniques consistently outperform others and revealing gaps in current methods for LLM optimization.
By Ruth Wan Theng Chew, Zhiliang Chen, Apivich Hemachandra, Bryan Kian Hsiang Low
arXiv:2607. 23480v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Variational autoencoders (VAEs) transform high-dimensional, often noisy data into a compact latent representation, making downstream optimization more tractable.
By Ye Shi
arXiv:2507.06529v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Bayesian optimization (BO) is a powerful paradigm for optimizing expensive black-box functions. Traditional BO methods typically rely on separate h...
By Fengxue Zhang, Yuxin Chen
The paper explores how to use gradients of simulator outputs with respect to input parameters to improve Bayesian inference for expensive simulators. By incorporating gradient information into Gaussian process surrogate models, the authors show that Bayesian optimization can converge faster under a limited simulation budget. They find that reverse‑mode differentiation yields efficiency gains, while forward‑mode does not offset its computational cost, especially when the number of parameters exceeds the output dimensionality.
By \v{S}imon Sold\'at, V\'aclav \v{S}m\'idl
arXiv:2608. 15669v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Scientific discovery often involves optimising expensive-to-evaluate objectives over vast, structured, and open-ended hypothesis spaces, such as molecules, protein sequences, and computer programs.
By Zhongwei Yu, Yan Song, Xue Yan, Anjie Liu, Xingyu Lu, Yihang Chen, Huichi Zhou, Siyuan Guo, Luoyang Sun, Sihan Chen, Xiangning Yu, Jun Wang
arXiv:2607. 12488v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Molecular optimization in drug discovery, materials design, and catalysis requires searching vast chemical spaces under tight evaluation budgets, since high-fidelity oracles and experimental measurements are costly.
By Sarina Kopf, Cristina Nevado, Philippe Schwaller
arXiv:2610.08969v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Black-box optimization problems are ubiquitous across science and engineering, often dealing with expensive objective functions. This objective latency...
By Gustavo Sutter, Alejandro Comas-Leon, David Holzm\"uller, Hao Wang, Luis Ricardez-Sandoval, Pascal Poupart, Agustinus Kristiadi