He earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. As a graduate student, he led the development of the student-built satellite, Sapphire, which was launched in 2001. Starting at Washington University in St. Louis and continuing at Parks, Swartwout has been involved in four student missions on the space shuttle and numerous balloon-launched student experiments, as well as flights on NASA's Microgravity University. His student teams have been in five consecutive Air Force University Nanosat competitions, taking second place three times. Their next student satellite, COPPER, is slated to launch in June 2012 as part of NASA's ELANA-IV flight. Swartwout's research interests center on the design and operation of low-cost space systems.