A practical heuristic for finding graph minors
  We present a heuristic algorithm for finding a graph $H$ as a minor of a graph $G$ that is practical for sparse $G$ and $H$ with hundreds of vertices. We also explain the practical importance of finding graph minors in mapping quadratic pseudo-boolean optimization problems onto an adiabatic quantum annealer. 
Jun Cai and William G. Macready and Aidan Roy
quant-ph cs.DS math.CO