Lopez del Puerto earned a licenciatura in Physics from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla in Mexico in 2002. She began her work in physics education that year, teaching physics at a local college for a term between the end of her undergraduate and the beginning of her graduate program. She went to the University of Minnesota for graduate study in physics, earning a master's degree in 2004 and completing her Ph.D. there in 2008, supervised by James R. Chelikowsky. Chelikowsky moved to the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin in 2005, and Lopez del Puerto continued to work with him there, but earned her degree through the University of Minnesota.