Loo was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and later lived in Taipei, Taiwan, where she attended Taipei American School. 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. 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."