[4] Hoogenraad completed a bachelor of agricultural science, by the end of which time he had "fallen in love with biochemistry", partly due to reading The Origin of Life by Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin.
[5] He completed his Ph.D. under agricultural biochemist Frank Hird, using biochemical and electron microscopy techniques to compile the first atlas of the bacteria in the rumen of sheep.
Working with the rumen bacteria was unpleasant and another member of Hird's lab, Max Marginson, started calling Hoogenraad "rumencrud" in allusion to this.
He returned to Australia in 1974 after being hired by Bruce Stone to join the new department of Biochemistry at La Trobe University.
[8] In 2015 his team published research showing how mice that do not have the receptor for a protein called Fn14 do not develop cachexia in cancer.