Dr. Norman's primary research interests include logistics and the application of operations research models to production and logistics systems. His research considers both theoretical developments and issues concerning the practical application of operations research models to logistics problems. His research focuses primarily on four aspects of logistics. The first is operational challenges in healthcare including patient flow, material supply, workspace organization, staffing, endoscope reprocessing, and surgical suite turnaround. He has worked with several different health systems to improve their operations and performance. The second is vaccine logistics. He has worked with the University of Pittsburgh's Vaccine Modeling Initiative to model the logistics of providing vaccines across the globe and in particular in lesser developed countries. The modeling efforts focus on the analysis of the cold chain and include analysis of cold storage and transport resources and supply chain network design. Third, is investigating methods for achieving efficient facility design and material handling in manufacturing and service environments. Fourth, is the development of mathematical models for scheduling manufacturing resources and personnel in both manufacturing and service organizations. Specific scheduling environments include: metal cutting machine tools, manufacturing shop floors, and staffing. In his research, he employs traditional optimization approaches such as math and dynamic programming, and heuristic solution techniques including: evolutionary computation and tabu search. He is a senior member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers and INFORMS.