Schwarz was a double major in history and physics at the
University of Maryland, College Park, graduating
magna cum laude in 1994. She went to
Harvard University for graduate study in physics, receiving both a master's degree and a Ph.D. in 2002. Her dissertation,
Depinning with Elastic Waves: Criticality, Hysteresis, and Even Pseudo-Hysteresis, was supervised by
Daniel S. Fisher. After postdoctoral research with
M. Cristina Marchetti and
A. Alan Middleton at
Syracuse University, and with
Andrea Liu at the
University of Pennsylvania and the
University of California, Los Angeles, she returned to Syracuse University as an assistant professor in 2005. She was
tenured while still retaining her assistant professor rank in 2011, promoted to associate professor in 2016, and promoted again to full professor in 2021. ==Recognition==