She received an MA in Program Evaluation and a PhD in School Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. She also completed a one-year child clinical research internship at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a two-year NIMH-funded research postdoctoral fellowship at ASU's Prevention Research Center (now REACH Institute), and a clinical internship at the Arizona Department of Juvenile Correction's Black Canyon Correctional School for girls. In 2009, Lopez was selected from a national competition to be a visiting scholar at the Univeristy of Houston's Center for Mexican American Studies where she spent the 2009-2010 academic year conducting research on Mexican American girls' relationship power, trust, and infidelity.