[345] Former Master's Student At MTSU Receives Master's Thesis Award

For Release: March 9, 2011
Contact: Tom Tozer, 615-898-2919


MURFREESBORO—Fengqing Zhang, a former master’s student at Middle Tennessee State University who is now pursuing her doctorate at Northwestern University, recently received the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools 2011 master’s thesis award for work that she completed as partial fulfillment of her Master of Science degree in Mathematics at MTSU.
The CSGS grants only three Master’s Thesis Awards each year. The award is based on clarity of style and presentation, scholarship, research methodology, contributions to the field and the innovative use of technology in the presentation of the thesis content.
“Ms. Zhang’s thesis demonstrates that she has excellent skills in both mathematics and statistics,” Dr. Michael Allen, dean of MTSU’s College of Graduate Studies, said in his nomination letter. “She has made an important contribution to the body of knowledge.”
“This makes her thesis even more impressive,” noted MTSU’s Dr. Peter Cunningham, associate dean of the College of Graduate Studies. “It is the type of thing you would expect from an advanced doctoral student. Northwestern recognized that and offered her a fellowship to go there to work on her Ph.D.”
Zhang’s thesis, “Multivariate Analysis Methods for IMS (imaging mass spectroscopy) Data Biomarker Selection and Classification,” received accolades by reviewers who called it “cutting-edge” because linking spectroscopy technology and the applied statistical method is relatively new work.
In his endorsement letter to the CSGS awards committee, Dr. Don Hong, professor of mathematical sciences at MTSU, pointed out that among more than a dozen graduate students whose research he has supervised in the past five years, “Zoe is the best student I ever had.”
Hong added that when Zhang was an undergraduate student at Beihang University in China, a university that is ranked among the 15 best colleges and universities in that country, she was ranked third among 92 graduates in her department.
“I am very impressed by her passion for mathematics and statistics as well as her self-motivated learning, study skills and hard-working attitude,” Hong noted. “I believe she will do excellent work in both courses and research projects at Northwestern University. She has great potential.”

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Photo ID: Fengqing “Zoe” Zhang and Dr. Peter Cunningham, associate dean of the College of Graduate Studies at MTSU (Photo by Don Hong)


Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.