Learning Low-Dimensional Embeddings for Black-Box Optimization

Black-box optimization (BBO) aims to find the solution of an optimization problem where the objective function is unknown or lacks an explicit mathematical formulation. Instead, the function can only be evaluated through queries, such as physical experiments or simulations through complex computational models. However, in many real-world scenarios, these evaluations are expensive, noisy, or time-consuming. Therefore, a key goal of black-box optimization is to find near-optimal solutions while limiting the number of costly function evaluations. Due to these challenges, BBO relies on sample-efficient strategies that select query points to balance exploration (searching unexplored regions) and exploitation (refining promising solutions).