Boston University Remembers Lü Lingzi With Memorial Fund: Friends And Family Speak About Chinese Victim Of Boston Marathon Bombing

Along with tens of thousands of well-wishes and condolences that poured in from all over the world for Lü Lingzi, one of the three victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, a scholarship fund has been established by Boston University trustees with $560,000 in her memory.

Lü Lingzi was a graduate student at Boston University studying statistics. She was by all reports a vivacious young woman, ambitious and full of life.

Less than 24 hours before the terrorist act that ended her life, Lü learned that she had passed the first part of the master’s comprehensive examination in statistics. An email from her showed that “she was clearly quite pleased,” said her professor for the class, Prof. Tasso Kaper. “Lü Lingzi was in the full glory of an extremely successful year as an MA student, with an extremely bright future ahead of her.”

“It had always been her dream to come to America to study,” Lü’s family wrote in a statement issued through Boston University. “She wanted to play a role in international business, specializing in applied mathematics. She had been studying very hard toward her goal. Sadly, it was not to be.”

Lü’s father also said that the entire family saved up to send her to study in the United States, but now they must come to America to collect their daughter’s remains.

After Lü’s death was confirmed, people who’d known her from her hometown of Shenyang in China's northeast, who’d gone to school with her, and many more who’d never met her personally expressed through social media their deep sadness for the young woman’s death and asked what they could do to honor her and memorialize the tragic event.

“But there was no central place to donate, and we asked ourselves, ‘What could we do to honor her memory, today and tomorrow?’” said Kenneth Feld, an alumnus and trustee of BU who proposed a scholarship at a meeting of the executive committee of the Campaign for BU on Wednesday. “A scholarship fund in her name will be there forever; people can contribute to something that is ongoing.” Before the end of that meeting, the committee’s seven members had committed $560,000 to the fund.

The scholarship, named the Lü Lingzi Memorial Scholarship Fund, is welcoming all contributions.