Usmani's present research interests include relativistic gravitation and its application to Astrophysics and Cosmology. Besides, he works on many-body theories to study finite- and infinite-body nuclear systems. At present, he is studying nuclear pasta phase under extreme exotic conditions in supernova collapse and in heavy-ion collisions. The study of compact dense stars, neuteron and hyperon stars is his another interest. He also works on strangeness physics of hypernuclei . The color transparency effects and final state interaction had been the focus of his research in the past. 

He is an associate of Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India. He was an ICSC world Laboratory scholar at International School of Advanced Studies (Scuola Internazionale Superiore di studi  Avanzati), Trieste, Italy. 

During his research career, he collaborated with  many researchers at leading institutions of the world  like, ForschungsZentrum, Juelich, Germany, University of Alberta, Simon Fraser University, Canada, Univeristy of Pisa, Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois and University of Rome. He visited and worked  as a researcher at most of the above institutions.

He has published many research articles in journals of high impact on the above subjects. During his university education, he earned National merit scholarship and University graduate and postgraduate merit scholarships.  He completed his Ph.D. on nucleus-nucleus collisions in 1990 under the supervision of Prof. Israr Ahmad. He is teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses at Aligarh Muslim University, India since 1998.