Hilding Elmqvist attained his Ph.D. at the Department of Automatic Control, Lund Institute of Technology in 1978. His Ph.D. thesis contains the design of a novel object-oriented model language called Dymola and algorithms for symbolic model manipulation. It introduced a new modeling methodology based on connecting submodels according to the corresponding physical connections instead of signal flows. Submodels were described declaratively by equations instead of assignment statements. Elmqvist spent one year in 1978-1979 at the Computer Science Department at Stanford University, California.
In 1992, Elmqvist founded Dynasim AB in Lund, Sweden. The primary product is Dymola for object-oriented modeling allowing graphical composition of models and 3D visualization of model dynamics. Elmqvist took the initiative in 1996 to organize an international effort to design the next generation object-oriented language for physical modeling: Modelica. In April 2006, Dynasim AB was acquired by Dassault Systemes. In January 2016, Elmqvist founded Mogram AB. Current activities include designing and implementing an experimental modeling language called Modia.