Hogeweg graduated with a bachelor"s degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1969. She later received a Doctor of Philosophy at Utrecht University in 1976. The title of her thesis is "Topics in Biological Pattern Analysis" and addresses pattern formation and pattern recognition in biology.
In 1970, Ben Hesper and she defined the term bioinformatics as "the study of informatic processes in biotic systems". In her early career, Hogeweg intensively collaborated with Ben Hesper. In 1977, Hogeweg founded the Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics research group at Utrecht University and has been its group leader until 2009.
This type of research later became popular in artificial life.
When the first biological sequence data became available (from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory) she developed a tree based algorithm for multiple sequence alignment, which is now common practice in sequence alignment and phylogeny. At about the same time she pioneered folding algorithms for predicting Ribonucleic acid secondary structures.
Ribonucleic acid folding was also introduced to allow for a non-linear genotype to phenotype mapping to study evolution on complex fitness landscapes. The first phase-phase trajectory of a chaotic attractor in an ecological food-chain model of three differential equations appeared long before chaos became popular.
She pioneered the use of cellular automata for studying spatial ecological and evolutionary processes and demonstrated that spatial pattern formation can revert evolutionary selection pressures.
Extending the Cellular Potts model (CPM) to study morphogenesis and development she modeled the complete life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum using simple rules for chemotaxis and differential adhesion. This CPM approach is now used for modeling in various areas of developmental biology, and the migration of immune cells in lymphoid tissues. Finally the CPM is used for EvoDevo research.
Currently, the Hogeweg lab is studying gene regulation networks.
Prebiotic evolution; and properties of fitness landscapes of Ribonucleic acid replicators.
Starting with asynchronous extensions of L-systems she pioneered agent-based modeling studying development of social structure in animal societies, using the opportunity based "ToDo" principle where agents "do what there is to do", and a "DoDom" principle for dominance ranking also known as the winner-loser effect.
