Umpiérrez completed his doctoral thesis with funding from a "Doctorate Abroad" scholarship awarded by the National Agency for Research and Innovation, as part of a program at the Department of Civil Engineering at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, which also included stints at the Biotechnology Laboratory at Universidad ORT Uruguay.
His thesis was supervised by Dr. Subhasis Ghoshal of McGill University and co-supervised by Dr. Lorena Betancor, a professor and researcher at ORT University.