In this article, we present a method to encrypt dynamic controllers that can be implemented through most homomorphic encryption schemes, including somewhat, leveled fully, and fully homomorphic encryption. To this end, we represent the output of the given controller as a linear combination of a fixed number of previous inputs and outputs. As a result, the encrypted controller involves only a limited number of homomorphic multiplications on every encrypted data, assuming that the output is re-encrypted and transmitted back from the actuator. A guidance for parameter choice is also provided, ensuring that the encrypted controller achieves predefined performance for an infinite time horizon. Furthermore, we propose a customization of the method for ring learning with errors (RLWE)-based cryptosystems, where a vector of messages can be encrypted into a single ciphertext and operated simultaneously, thus reducing computation and communication loads. Unlike previous results, the proposed customization does not require extra algorithms, such as rotation, other than basic addition and multiplication. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Supervised matrix factorization (SMF) is a classical machine learning method that seeks low-dimensional feature extraction and classification tasks at the same time. Training an SMF model involves solving a non-convex and factor-wise constrained optimization problem with at least three blocks of parameters. Due to the high non-convexity and constraints, theoretical understanding of the optimization landscape of SMF has been limited. In this paper, we provide an extensive local landscape analysis for SMF and derive several theoretical and practical applications. Analyzing diagonal blocks of the Hessian naturally leads to a block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm with adaptive step sizes. We provide global convergence and iteration complexity guarantees for this algorithm. Full Hessian analysis gives minimum $L_{2}$-regularization to guarantee local strong convexity and robustness of parameters. We establish a local estimation guarantee under a statistical SMF model. We also propose a novel GPU-friendly neural implementation of the BCD algorithm and validate our theoretical findings through numerical experiments. Our work contributes to a deeper understanding of SMF optimization, offering insights into the optimization landscape and providing practical solutions to enhance its performance.

Estimating individualized treatment rules (ITRs) is fundamental in causal inference, particularly for precision medicine applications. Traditional ITR estimation methods rely on inverse probability weighting (IPW) to address confounding factors and $L_{1}$-penalization for simplicity and interpretability. However, IPW can introduce statistical bias without precise propensity score modeling, while $L_1$-penalization makes the objective non-smooth, leading to computational bias and requiring subgradient methods. In this paper, we propose a unified ITR estimation framework formulated as a constrained, weighted, and smooth convex optimization problem. The optimal ITR can be robustly and effectively computed by projected gradient descent. Our comprehensive theoretical analysis reveals that weights that balance the spectrum of a `weighted design matrix' improve both the optimization and likelihood landscapes, yielding improved computational and statistical estimation guarantees. In particular, this is achieved by distributional covariate balancing weights, which are model-free alternatives to IPW. Extensive simulations and applications demonstrate that our framework achieves significant gains in both robustness and effectiveness for ITR learning against existing methods.

Supervised matrix factorization (SMF) is a classical machine learning method that simultaneously seeks feature extraction and classification tasks, which are not necessarily a priori aligned objectives. Our goal is to use SMF to learn low-rank latent factors that offer interpretable, data-reconstructive, and class-discriminative features, addressing challenges posed by high-dimensional data. Training SMF model involves solving a nonconvex and possibly constrained optimization with at least three blocks of parameters. Known algorithms are either heuristic or provide weak convergence guarantees for special cases. In this paper, we provide a novel framework that `lifts' SMF as a low-rank matrix estimation problem in a combined factor space and propose an efficient algorithm that provably converges exponentially fast to a global minimizer of the objective with arbitrary initialization under mild assumptions. Our framework applies to a wide range of SMF-type problems for multi-class classification with auxiliary features. To showcase an application, we demonstrate that our algorithm successfully identified well-known cancer-associated gene groups for various cancers.

App install advertising not only serves as a revenue source for mobile app developers and mobile ad platforms, but also is considered an effective channel for app exposure to mobile app users. Owing to their benefits to the main players, such ads are the driving force of mobile advertising growth. For the purpose of improving the effectiveness of app install ads, this study investigated how to select potential active users for advertised apps based on users’ previous app usage behaviors. By analyzing large-scale field data on game app usage behaviors, users’ engagement level, specifically daily number of purchase activity in the medium app was found as the significant factor for targeting potential active users for the advertised app. However, users with a longer app session time in medium app and users who have more game apps in their mobile devices have a lower probability of becoming active users of the advertised app due to their limited time. It was also found that users who have played game apps in the same category as the advertised app are more likely to become active users of the advertised app. Both the theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed for improving the effectiveness of app install ads.