Norman's doctoral research has centered around understanding how proteins are trafficked to the inner nuclear membrane (INM). INM proteins in animals serve a variety of roles, including nuclear positioning, nuclear movement, and genome organization. Plants largely lack homologs of animal INM proteins, indicating plant INM proteins are structurally distinct from their animal counterparts. His research has developed chimeric membrane proteins of varying sizes and structures that localize to the INM. He is now adapting these chimeric INM proteins to act as INM-localized genome tethers. Existing chimeric INM proteins will be fused to DNA binding domains to bind and redirect gene loci to the nuclear periphery.