Awesome Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimization Papers

We would like to maintain a list of papers that utilize machine learning technologies to solve combinatorial optimization problems.

Content

1. Survey
2. Problems
2.1 Graph Matching (GM)	2.2 Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP)
2.3 Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP)	2.4 Dynamic Resource Dispatch (JSP)
2.5 Bin Packing Problem	2.6 Graph Edit Distance (GED)
2.7 Graph Coloring	2.8 Maximal Common Subgraph (MCS)
2.9 Influence Maximization	2.10 Maximal Independent Set (MIS)
2.11 Maximal Cut	2.12 Mixed Integer Programming
2.13 Causal Discovery	2.14 Game Theoretic Semantics
2.15 Boolean Satisfiability (SAT)	2.16 Differentiable Optimization

Survey Papers

1. Machine Learning for Combinatorial Optimization: a Methodological Tour d'horizon. EJOR, 2020. paper

   Bengio, Yoshua and Lodi, Andrea and Prouvost, Antoine.

2. Reinforcement Learning for Combinatorial Optimization: A Survey. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Mazyavkina, Nina and Sviridov, Sergey and Ivanov, Sergei and Burnaev, Evgeny.

3. Learning Graph Matching and Related Combinatorial Optimization Problems. IJCAI, 2020. paper

   Yan, Junchi and Yang, Shuang, and Hancock, Edwin R.

Problems

Graph Matching

1. Revised Note on Learning Algorithms for Quadratic Assignment with Graph Neural Networks Arxiv, 2017. paper, code

   Nowak, Alex and Villar, Soledad and Bandeira, S. Afonso and Bruna, Joan

2. Deep Learning of Graph Matching. CVPR, 2018. paper

   Zanfir, Andrei and Sminchisescu, Cristian

3. Learning Combinatorial Embedding Networks for Deep Graph Matching. ICCV, 2019. paper, code

   Wang, Runzhong and Yan, Junchi and Yang, Xiaokang

4. Deep Graphical Feature Learning for the Feature Matching Problem. ICCV, 2019. paper

   Zhang, Zhen and Lee, Wee Sun

5. GLMNet: Graph Learning-Matching Networks for Feature Matching. Arxiv, 2019. paper

   Jiang, Bo and Sun, Pengfei and Tang, Jin and Luo, Bin

6. Neural Graph Matching Network: Learning Lawler's Quadratic Assignment Problem with Extension to Hypergraph and Multiple-graph Matching. Arxiv, 2019. paper

   Wang, Runzhong and Yan, Junchi and Yang, Xiaokang

7. Learning deep graph matching with channel-independent embedding and Hungarian attention. ICLR, 2020. paper

   Yu, Tianshu and Wang, Runzhong and Yan, Junchi and Li, Baoxin

8. Deep Graph Matching Consensus. ICLR, 2020. paper

   Fey, Matthias and Lenssen, Jan E. and Morris, Christopher and Masci, Jonathan and Kriege, Nils M.

9. Graduated Assignment for Joint Multi-Graph Matching and Clustering with Application to Unsupervised Graph Matching Network Learning. NeurIPS, 2020. paper

   Wang, Runzhong and Yan, Junchi and Yang, Xiaokang

10. Combinatorial Learning of Robust Deep Graph Matching: An Embedding Based Approach. TPAMI, 2020. paper

    Wang, Runzhong and Yan, Junchi and Yang, Xiaokang

11. Deep Graph Matching via Blackbox Differentiation of Combinatorial Solvers. ECCV, 2020. paper, code

    Rolinek, Michal and Swoboda, Paul and Zietlow, Dominik and Paulus, Anselm and Musil, Vit and Martius, Georg

12. Deep Reinforcement Learning of Graph Matching. Arxiv, 2020. paper

    Liu, Chang and Wang, Runzhong and Jiang, Zetian and Yan, Junchi

Travelling Salesman Problem

1. Learning Combinatorial Optimization Algorithms over Graphs. NeurIPS, 2017. paper

   Dai, Hanjun and Khalil, Elias B and Zhang, Yuyu and Dilkina, Bistra and Song, Le

2. POMO: Policy Optimization with Multiple Optima for Reinforcement Learning. NeurIPS, 2018. paper

   Kwon, Yeong-Dae and Choo, Jinho and Kim, Byoungjip and Yoon, Iljoo and Min, Seungjai and Gwon, Youngjune.

3. Learning Heuristics for the TSP by Policy Gradient CPAIOR, 2018. paper, code

   Michel DeudonPierre CournutAlexandre Lacoste

4. Attention, Learn to Solve Routing Problems! ICLR, 2019. paper

   Kool, Wouter and Van Hoof, Herke and Welling, Max.

5. Learning to Solve NP-Complete Problems: A Graph Neural Network for Decision TSP. AAAI, 2019. paper

   Prates, Marcelo and Avelar, Pedro HC and Lemos, Henrique and Lamb, Luis C and Vardi, Moshe Y.

6. An Efficient Graph Convolutional Network Technique for the Travelling Salesman Problem Arxiv, 2019. paper, code

   Chaitanya K. Joshi, Thomas Laurent, Xavier Bresson

7. Generalize a Small Pre-trained Model to Arbitrarily Large TSP Instances Zhang-Hua. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Fu, Zhang-Hua and Qiu, Kai-Bin and Zha, Hongyuan.

8. Differentiation of Blackbox Combinatorial Solvers ICLR, 2020. paper, code

   Marin Vlastelica, Anselm Paulus, Vít Musil, Georg Martius, Michal Rolínek

9. The Transformer Network for the Traveling Salesman Problem IPAM, 2021. paper

   Xavier Bresson，Thomas Laurent

Vehicle Routing Problem

1. Learning to Perform Local Rewriting for Combinatorial Optimization. NeurIPS, 2019. paper, code

   Chen, Xinyun and Tian, Yuandong.

2. Deep Reinforcement Learning for the Electric Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Lin, Bo and Ghaddar, Bissan and Nathwani, Jatin.

3. A Learning-based Iterative Method for Solving Vehicle Routing Problems ICLR, 2020. paper

   Lu, Hao and Zhang, Xingwen and Yang, Shuang

Dynamic Resource Dispatch

1. Dynamic pickup and delivery problems EJOR, 2010. paper

   Berbeglia, Gerardo and Cordeau, Jean-FranCois and Laporte, Gilbert

2. Resource Management with Deep Reinforcement Learning. HotNets, 2016. paper

   Mao, Hongzi and Alizadeh, Mohammad and Menache, Ishai and Kandula, Srikanth.

3. Learning Scheduling Algorithms for Data Processing Clusters SIGCOMM, 2019. paper, code

   Mao, Hongzi and Schwarzkopf, Malte and Venkatakrishnan, Bojja Shaileshh and Meng, Zili and Alizadeh, Mohammad.

4. Smart Resource Allocation for Mobile Edge Computing: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, 2019. Paper

   Jiadai; Lei Zhao; Jiajia Liu; Nei Kato

5. Learning to Dispatch for Job Shop Scheduling via Deep Reinforcement Learning. NeurIPS, 2020. paper, code

   Zhang, Cong and Song, Wen and Cao, Zhiguang and Zhang, Jie and Tan, Puay Siew and Xu, Chi.

6. The Complexity Landscape of Resource-Constrained Scheduling IJCAI, 2020. paper

   Robert Ganian, Thekla Hamm, Guillaume Mescoff

Bin Packing Problem

1. Small Boxes Big Data: A Deep Learning Approach to Optimize Variable Sized Bin Packing BigDataService, 2017. paper

   Mao, Feng and Blanco, Edgar and Fu, Mingang and Jain, Rohit and Gupta, Anurag and Mancel, Sebastien and Yuan, Rong and Guo, Stephen and Kumar, Sai and Tian, Yayang

2. Solving a New 3D Bin Packing Problem with Deep Reinforcement Learning Method Arxiv, 2017. paper

   Hu, Haoyuan and Zhang, Xiaodong and Yan, Xiaowei and Wang, Longfei and Xu, Yinghui

3. A Multi-task Selected Learning Approach for Solving 3D Bin Packing Problem. Arxiv, 2018. paper

   Duan, Lu and Hu, Haoyuan and Qian, Yu and Gong, Yu and Zhang, Xiaodong and Xu, Yinghui and Wei, Jiangwen.

4. Ranked Reward: Enabling Self-Play Reinforcement Learning for Combinatorial Optimization Alexandre Arxiv, 2018. paper

   Laterre, Alexandre and Fu, Yunguan and Jabri, Mohamed Khalil and Cohen, Alain-Sam and Kas, David and Hajjar, Karl and Dahl, Torbjorn S and Kerkeni, Amine and Beguir, Karim

5. A Data-Driven Approach for Multi-level Packing Problems in Manufacturing Industry KDD, 2019. paper

   Chen, Lei and Tong, Xialiang and Yuan, Mingxuan and Zeng, Jia and Chen, Lei

6. Solving Packing Problems by Conditional Query Learning OpenReview, 2019. paper

   Li, Dongda and Ren, Changwei and Gu, Zhaoquan and Wang, Yuexuan and Lau, Francis

7. RePack: Dense Object Packing Using Deep CNN with Reinforcement Learning CACS, 2019. paper

   Chu, Yu-Cheng and Lin, Horng-Horng

8. Online 3D Bin Packing with Constrained Deep Reinforcement Learning. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Zhao, Hang and She, Qijin and Zhu, Chenyang and Yang, Yin and Xu, Kai.

9. A Generalized Reinforcement Learning Algorithm for Online 3D Bin-Packing. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Verma, Richa and Singhal, Aniruddha and Khadilkar, Harshad and Basumatary, Ansuma and Nayak, Siddharth and Singh, Harsh Vardhan and Kumar, Swagat and Sinha, Rajesh.

10. Robot Packing with Known Items and Nondeterministic Arrival Order. TASAE, 2020. paper

    Wang, Fan and Hauser, Kris.

11. TAP-Net: Transport-and-Pack using Reinforcement Learning. TOG, 2020. paper, code

    Hu, Ruizhen and Xu, Juzhan and Chen, Bin and Gong, Minglun and Zhang, Hao and Huang, Hui.

12. Simultaneous Planning for Item Picking and Placing by Deep Reinforcement Learning IROS, 2020. paper

    Tanaka, Tatsuya and Kaneko, Toshimitsu and Sekine, Masahiro and Tangkaratt, Voot and Sugiyama, Masashi

13. Monte Carlo Tree Search on Perfect Rectangle Packing Problem Instances GECCO, 2020. paper

    Pejic, Igor and van den Berg, Daan

14. PackIt: A Virtual Environment for Geometric Planning ICML, 2020. paper

    Goyal, Ankit and Deng, Jia

Graph Edit Distance

1. SimGNN - A Neural Network Approach to Fast Graph Similarity Computation WSDM, 2019. paper, code

   Bai, Yunsheng and Ding, Hao and Bian, Song and Chen, Ting and Sun, Yizhou and Wang, Wei

2. Graph Matching Networks for Learning the Similarity of Graph Structured Objects ICML, 2019. paper

   Li, Yujia and Gu, Chenjie and Dullien, Thomas and Vinyals, Oriol and Kohli, Pushmeet

3. Combinatorial Learning of Graph Edit Distance via Dynamic Embedding. CVPR, 2021. paper

   Wang, Runzhong and Zhang, Tianqi and Yu, Tianshu and Yan, Junchi and Yang, Xiaokang.

Graph Coloring

1. Deep Learning-based Hybrid Graph-Coloring Algorithm for Register Allocation. Arxiv, 2019. paper

   Das, Dibyendu and Ahmad, Shahid Asghar and Venkataramanan, Kumar.

Maximal Common Subgraph

1. Fast Detection of Maximum Common Subgraph via Deep Q-Learning. Arxiv, 2020. paper

   Bai, Yunsheng and Xu, Derek and Wang, Alex and Gu, Ken and Wu, Xueqing and Marinovic, Agustin and Ro, Christopher and Sun, Yizhou and Wang, Wei.

Influence Maximization

1. Learning Heuristics over Large Graphs via Deep Reinforcement Learning. NeurIPS, 2020. paper

   Mittal, Akash and Dhawan, Anuj and Manchanda, Sahil and Medya, Sourav and Ranu, Sayan and Singh, Ambuj.

Maximal Independent Set

1. Combinatorial Optimization with Graph Convolutional Networks and Guided Tree Search. NeurIPS, 2018. paper

   Li, Zhuwen and Chen, Qifeng and Koltun, Vladlen.

Maximal Cut

1. Exploratory Combinatorial Optimization with Reinforcement Learning. AAAI, 2020. paper

   LBarrett, Thomas and Clements, William and Foerster, Jakob and Lvovsky, Alex.

2. Erdos Goes Neural: an Unsupervised Learning Framework for Combinatorial Optimization on Graphs. NeurIPS, 2020. paper

   Karalias, Nikolaos and Loukas, Andreas

Mixed Integer Programming

1. Improving Learning to Branch via Reinforcement Learning. NeurIPS Workshop, 2020. paper

   Sun, Haoran and Chen, Wenbo and Li, Hui and Song, Le.

Causal Discovery

1. Causal Discovery with Reinforcement Learning. ICLR, 2020. paper

   Zhu, Shengyu and Ng, Ignavier and Chen, Zhitang.

Game Theoretic Semantics

1. First-Order Problem Solving through Neural MCTS based Reinforcement Learning. Arxiv, 2021. paper

   Xu, Ruiyang and Kadam, Prashank and Lieberherr, Karl.

Boolean Satisfiability

1. Learning Local Search Heuristics for Boolean Satisfiability. NeurIPS, 2019. paper

   Yolcu, Emre and Poczos, Barnabas

Differentiable Optimization

1. Differentiable Learning of Submodular Models NeurIPS, 2017. paper, code

   Josip Djolonga, Andreas Krause

2. Melding the Data-Decisions Pipeline: Decision-Focused Learning for Combinatorial Optimization AAAI, 2019. paper

   Bryan Wilder, Bistra Dilkina, Milind Tambe

3. MIPaaL: Mixed Integer Program as a Layer AAAI, 2020. paper, code

   Aaron Ferber, Bryan Wilder, Bistra Dilkina, Milind Tambe

4. Smart Predict-and-Optimize for Hard Combinatorial Optimization Problems AAAI, 2020. paper, code

   Jaynta Mandi, Emir Demirovi, Peter. J Stuckey, Tias Guns

5. Differentiation of blackbox combinatorial solvers ICLR, 2020. paper, code

   Marin Vlastelica Pogani, Anselm Paulus, Vit Musil, Georg Martius, Michal Rolinek

6. Interior Point Solving for LP-based prediction+optimization NeurIPS, 2020. paper, code

   Jayanta Mandi, Tias Guns