[1] He is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society (1999)[2] and the recipient of its 2002 Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach for his contributions to science education.
[4] López played an instrumental role in the implementation of a hands-on science program in the elementary and middle grades of the Montgomery County Public School System in Maryland.
When he was a child his father gave him a telescope as a birthday present, and the Apollo 11 Moon landing on July 20, 1969 inspired him to seek an education in the field of Space Physics.
He was awarded a National Science Foundation minority graduate fellowship which he used to attend Rice University in Houston as a student in the Department of Space Physics and Astronomy.
[7] He worked very closely with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland to help implement a hands-on science program in elementary and middle grades.
He has worked extensively on magnetospheric substorms, which are the episodic release of energy extracted from the solar wind and stored in the geomagnetic tail.