Swanson trained as a biochemist and molecular biologist during her undergraduate studies at Yale University, graduating with a bachelor of science in 1987.
She then earned her Master’s Degree and Juris Doctor at the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1992, respectively.
She was also selected as the 2020 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smothsonian Museum of American History to support her project, “Inventing Citizens: Race, Gender, and Patents.” Her work includes an examination of the human body as property.
[2] Swanson received the 2007 Joan Cahalin Robinson Prize from the Society for the History of Technology.
[4] She received the 2018 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize from the History of Science Society[5] In 2021, her essay "Race and Selective Legal Memory: Reflections on 'Invention of a Slave'" earned the John Hope Franklin Prize from the Law & Society Association.