Tanaka received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 2009 and was subsequently a postdoctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in 2009-2011. Tanaka's research focuses on radiative transfer in supernova explosions and compact binary mergers, spectropolarimetric observations and modelling of supernova explosions, and transient surveys using wide-field optical telescopes.