Now completing her second year as a professor at UMD, she has an extensive resume of academic research that began with studying in her home country of China before arriving in the United States and spending 10 years in Texas.
Her passion for communication stemmed from courses that she took that inspired her to apply for graduate studies in communication and come out with a PhD in health and interpersonal communication.
“I got my undergraduate degree in English literature and linguistics from a Chinese university. Then I came to the United States to study interpersonal communication and got my master’s degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and then I moved to a doctoral program at the University of Texas at Austin,” she said.
She would then go on to work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and receive a job offer at the medical school at the University of Utah, which she explains to be an “atypical” career path for someone with a heavy emphasis on communication. She spent two years there working with an interdisciplinary team of scholars.
“A lot of my colleagues and friends just went directly to teaching at a university without the transition of being a postdoc,” she said, “but the two years I spent at the University of Utah has really broadened my perspective and scope in terms of how important communication is to health care.”
She later received a job offer from UMD and began her work as an assistant professor in 2023.
“I guess what really convinced me to start the job here is how much emphasis UMD has put on high-quality undergraduate education and student wellbeing and success,” she said. “I saw that even when I was here for the job interview and the campus visit – how connected community members are on campus.”
She has already been involved in more than 29 pieces of research, focusing on relationships and healthcare.
“Dr. Lingzi Zhong is one of the nation’s leading young interpersonal and health scholars,” Dr. Aaron Boyson, the Communication Department head, said. “Lingzi is already one of our most prolific researchers.”
Zhong attributes some of this success to the collaborative nature of the research.
“In the medical field, it’s very interdisciplinary, and I got to work with medical professionals, biostatisticians, and public health experts, so it's a lot of time working in group settings and team settings,” she said. “So, I guess that also sort of drives up the impact or visibility of my research.”
Because of this variety in her work, the type of research dictates the methodological approach she’ll employ: “I would consider myself a mixed methods researcher. I use both qualitative and quantitative research methods.”
In a study published in 2024 titled, “Explicating a comprehensive model of post-dissolution distress,” Zhong was part of a team that studied the factors that influence individuals’ experience of post-dissolution distress following romantic breakups.
“Our idea about this project is we want to understand what it really means to experience distress after breaking up with a romantic partner,” she said. “Less is known about how we can conceptualize or define post-dissolution distress.”
The results showed persistent predictors in distress, such as an individual’s relationship insecurity, attachment style and relational anxiety. Usually, this fear is proportionate to the stress, rather than situational factors of how the breakup began.
The research also found that pursuing healthier emotional outlets, such as talking with a therapist, counselor, or a close friend, can help mitigate and improve the effects of distress instead of engaging in dysfunctional coping mechanisms like self-medication and avoidance.
“If we could help participants to engage in more emotion-focused coping by expressing their emotions, opening up to someone that they trust, that will help them a lot,” she said.
Her current research centers around aiding UMD students, who often struggle with mental health and conflict management issues due to a high demand for and limited availability of campus resources, such as therapists and counselors.
“We definitely see mental health issues as a big concern for UMD students,” she said. “So what we want to work on is to develop a chatbot-based intervention where students are able to practice their interpersonal communication skills.”
While it would not replace campus resources, Zhong hopes it could serve as a complimentary tool for students who struggle while waiting for assistance and can instead take managing interpersonal conflicts and skills into their own hands.