Similarly, I've always hating the "take tech from the enemy to progress yourself" model. In particular, I'm reminded of Vindictus, the action MMO released by Nexon/devCat. It looks fine, and as a game it runs solidly, but after a while I realized that every piece of equipment you use is stolen. There's noob items that you can get for near-free, like a wooden shield and a rusted sword, but all the items you use after level 1 are crafted. And all of those are crafted from stolen items. You get "1x Broken Goblin Blade" and add "2x Iron Ore" to get "Veteran's Blade" or something similar. All of your equipment is something damaged from the enemy that's been spruced up with a bit of raw materials. In the game, humans are supposed to be a superpower in their own right, challenging certain gods, and yet all their equipment is looted.
Similarly, for Aurora, extremely very little should be purely stolen tech. We should be able to research everything except a few rare exceptions, like plasma warheads. Biological tech is certainly within the realm of human research. Profitable biotech, is another matter. In other games, they usually give it a size scaling with tech. Every 2 tech level reduces the size by 10%, for instance. At early tech, mounting a supercomputer (runs the ship without crew) might cost as much space as crew accommodations. At higher levels, a supercomputer may occupy 25% the space a crew might. Aurora doesn't have that sort of "each x level does y to the module" but it does have comparative technology. I could imagine a "bioengineering" module, and it would utilize a few different technology types. For instance, you may be able to research "Engineering efficiency" which is 2*HS at low tech, 3*HS at next tech, 4*HS next, etc. So at tech one, you might have a biocomputer that could occupy 50 HS and count as 100 crew. At tech two, you could have a biocomputer size 33 that would count as 99 crew, and tech three gives you a size 25 that counts for 100, etc. So, as you research more, you can trade out some crew for crazy organics. Similarly, it would have tech for hit-to-kill rating and upkeep rating and whatnot.
Naturally, the swarm would already have a massive level in this, so capturing swarm ships and deconstructing them could provide you with significant knowledge on biological vessels.
Maybe I should wander to the suggestions thread....
Oh, but back on original topic: I believe it could be done with human resources, especially in Aurora - after all you can design who new species at will - but it would prove a significant RP sinkhole before you started to see notable returns. And, logically, it would prove viable to study the swarm at length in order to gleam knowledge from their wrecks, instead of researching the area yourself.
