She moved to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania, where she completed bachelor's degrees in chemical engineering and materials science in 1996.

[3] She then pursued graduate studies at Princeton University, where she received a Ph.D. in chemical engineering in 2001 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Controlled polymer crystallization through block copolymer self-assembly.

"[4][3] She worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Bell Laboratories for a year afterward before joining the University of Texas at Austin's Chemical Engineering Department.

[5] During her time at Bell Labs, Loo, along with Julia Hsu, accidentally uncovered duplicated figures in two papers by Jan Hendrik Schön, the first of many instances of academic fraud from the researcher.

Her research concerns the periodic structures of block polymers, organic semiconductors, and patterning techniques for plastic electronics.