Hiroki Oshio was born in 1953 in Fukuoka. He graduated from Kyushu University in 1977 and obtained his Ph.D. in 1982 under the guidance of Prof. Yoshimasa Takashima. As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked with Prof. Kazuo Nakamoto at Marquette University between 1982 and 1984, before being appointed as a research associate at the Institute for Molecular Science (Okazaki, Japan) in 1985. In 1992 he moved to Tohoku University as an Associate Professor, where he began his studies of multi-nuclear high-spin complexes until 2001 which saw him appointed as a Professor at the University of Tsukuba in the Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, where his research has focused on the synthesis and study of magnetic molecules and bistable multinuclear clusters.