Hiroki Tanimoto was born in 1981 in Nagano, Japan. He also spent his childhood in Rangoon, State of Burma (currently Yangon,  Myanmar) in 1988, and Jakarta, Indonesia from 1990 to 1997. He received his BS in 2004 and his Ph. D. in 2009 at Keio University in Japan (Professor Noritaka Chida). After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Vanderbilt University in the United States (Professor Gary A. Sulikowski), he joined at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan as an assistant professor in 2010. In 2020, he was appointed as an associate professor of the University of Toyama (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Academic Assembly). His research focuses on new synthetic methods utilizing nitrogen-containing reactive functional groups such as azido and nitroso groups for alkaloids synthesis, heterocycles synthesis, and click chemistry toward functional polymers or chemical probes. He also engages himself in main group chemistry, especially the synthesis and the characterization of new germanium and silicon materials.

アジドやジアゾ、高周期ケイ素族元素といった、天然に(ほとんど)ない元素・原子団の精密制御を鍵とした合成化学的手法の開発を通じ、生命・天然へアプローチする「非天然・人工化学による自然化学の解明と拡張」を行っている。現在のところ、薬剤作用たんぱく質の構造決定に資する分子プローブや機能分子材料,生物活性分子類の合成、方法論の確立と応用,ならびに高周期14族元素の超配位性に着目したセンシング分子の開発にも取り組んでいる.