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Maria Florina Balcan

9 accepted papers

2026

Nearly-Optimal Bandit Learning in Stackelberg Games with Side Information

ICLR 2026poster

We study the problem of online learning in Stackelberg games with side information between a leader and a sequence of followers. In every round the leader observes contextual information and commits to a mixed strategy, after which the follower best-responds. We provide learning algorithms for the l…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2026

Weakest Bidder Types and New Core-Selecting Combinatorial Auctions

AAAI 2026technical

Core-selecting combinatorial auctions are popular auction designs that constrain prices to eliminate the incentive for any group of bidders---with the seller---to renegotiate for a better deal. They help overcome the low-revenue issues of classical combinatorial auctions. We introduce a new class of

Cited by 0SourcePDFScholar
2025

Learning from weak labelers as constraints

ICLR 2025poster

We study programmatic weak supervision, where in contrast to labeled data, we have access to \emph{weak labelers}, each of which either abstains or provides noisy labels corresponding to any input. Most previous approaches typically employ latent generative models that model the joint distribution o…

Cited by 0SourcePDFScholar
2025

On Learning Verifiers and Implications to Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

NeurIPS 2025poster

Chain-of-Thought reasoning has emerged as a powerful approach for solving complex math- ematical and logical problems. However, it can often veer off track through incorrect or unsubstantiated inferences. Formal mathematical reasoning, which can be checked with a formal verifier, is one approach to…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2025

Sample complexity of data-driven tuning of model hyperparameters in neural networks with structured parameter-dependent dual function

NeurIPS 2025poster

Modern machine learning algorithms, especially deep learning-based techniques, typically involve careful hyperparameter tuning to achieve the best performance. Despite the surge of intense interest in practical techniques like Bayesian optimization and random search-based approaches to automating th…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2024

Accelerating ERM for data-driven algorithm design using output-sensitive techniques

NeurIPS 2024poster

Data-driven algorithm design is a promising, learning-based approach for beyond worst-case analysis of algorithms with tunable parameters. An important open problem is the design of computationally efficient data-driven algorithms for combinatorial algorithm families with multiple parameters. As one…

Cited by 1SourcePDFScholar
2024

Learning to Relax: Setting Solver Parameters Across a Sequence of Linear System Instances

ICLR 2024spotlight

Solving a linear system ${\bf Ax}={\bf b}$ is a fundamental scientific computing primitive for which numerous solvers and preconditioners have been developed. These come with parameters whose optimal values depend on the system being solved and are often impossible or too expensive to identify; t…

Cited by 6SourcePDFScholar
2024

Spectrally Transformed Kernel Regression

ICLR 2024spotlight

Unlabeled data is a key component of modern machine learning. In general, the role of unlabeled data is to impose a form of smoothness, usually from the similarity information encoded in a base kernel, such as the ϵ-neighbor kernel or the adjacency matrix of a graph. This work revisits the classical…

Cited by 3SourcePDFScholar