Noel Schwerin has been making documentary films for fifteen years. She wrote, directed and produced A Question of Genes from an original idea. She also raised all the funding for the special. At the award-winning PBS series, NOVA, she Co-Directed Yellowstone's Burning Question, and as NOVA's Series Associate Producer, produced and directed sequences for such award-winning films as So You Want to Be a Doctor, The Big Spill, and Freud Under Analysis. Schwerin was also Associate Producer, in pre-production, for the eight-hour PBS series The Secret of Life.

When a series of spinal surgeries interrupted Schwerin's PBS work, Schwerin created X-RAY VISIONS, a groundbreaking documentary art installation that incorporated photographs she made from her actual x-rays with excerpts from her medical record. Designed for hospitals, X-RAY VISIONS opened at the Massachusetts General Hospital and received extensive national press coverage.

In 1985, Schwerin wrote, produced and directed Just Passing Through, a PBS documentary film that profiled juvenile delinquents in a wilderness rehabilitation program.

A graduate of Yale University, Schwerin worked in news production for WFSB in New Haven, CT and for ABC Network News, and as Coordinating Producer and Associate Producer for a number of independent documentary production companies. She has also served as film consultant and Series Producer for the Carnegie Corporation.

Schwerin is currently developing several documentary projects about science, ethics and the law for her company, Backbone Media. She recently moved to San Francisco with her husband, evolutionary biologist and Stanford University Professor, David Ackerly.