Timurs pursued his interests in fundamental research by joining the laboratory of Karim Labib at the Manchester Cancer Research Centre in the United Kingdom after receiving a doctoral studentship from Cancer Research UK. Using the budding yeast as a model organism in his doctoral work, Timurs studied a role of a novel enzyme, known as SCFDia2 ubiquitin ligase, during DNA replication in the S phase of the cell cycle. Timurs continued his career as a postdoctoral scientist in the pharmaceutical industry in a collaborative project between the AstraZeneca High-Throughput Screening Centre and the academic laboratory headed by Ronald Hay. In late 2015 Timurs joined a collaborative project between the group of Ivan Dikic and Fraunhofer IME. Timurs has received the Human Frontier Science Program postdoctoral fellowship to study the role of ubiquitin ligase-like effectors during infection by lethal bacterial pathogens. He finished his work and moved on in 2018.