For the last four years, student Jeremy Cholfin's home away from home has been the laboratory of Daniel Geschwind, director of the neurogenetics program and assistant professor of neurology.

Spending 10-20 hours a week in the lab during the school year and extending that during the summer to as many as 60 hours a week, Cholfin, a neuroscience major, has been dogged in his pursuit of answers to the mystery surrounding a rare speech disorder.

Hard work recently paid off for the College of Letters & Science senior, who was selected in a national competition by the Council on Undergraduate Research to present his research on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 29.

There, Cholfin met with California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Los Angeles Congressman Henry Waxman and a senior aide to California Senator Barbara Boxer. He talked about his work, along with 67 of his fellow honorees, during a research poster session in the Rayburn House Office Building foyer.

"The brain is tremendously complex," he said. "Even today, there is so little known about the molecular mechanisms of language development. Research in this field is exciting."

Why is Cholfin so devoted to research?

"When you conduct research, you are working on the frontier of knowledge, asking questions to find out what nobody has ever known before," he said. "My classes have been great, but in class, you're presented mostly with the solid facts; in research, you ask questions and try to find the best way to answer them. You have to deal with uncertainty. Research is like a jigsaw puzzle. As you fill in the pieces, the picture becomes clearer. I hope to be able to fill in a piece of the language-development puzzle."

Through the years, Cholfin's mentor, Geschwind, has been "a great role model," the student researcher said, "and I have also enjoyed the opportunity to work with Dr. Susi Sobrido, a postdoctoral research fellow, on neurological diseases. I've been privileged to work in this lab."

Cholfin will attend a joint M.D.-Ph.D. program after he graduates and then plans to treat patients, conduct research on neuroscience and teach.

"I hope to connect our understanding of the brain on the molecular level with behavioral abnormalities," said Cholfin, who is co-author on research papers accepted for publication in scientific journals and the recipient of several awards and honors, including four scholarships for academic excellence.

He was also honored by the Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Program and is founding president of UCLA's Neuroscience Undergraduate Society, through which Cholfin and other UCLA students discuss new research and go to elementary and secondary classrooms to make presentations on the human brain.

Geschwind praised Cholfin as "very thoughtful, dedicated, creative, independent and extremely smart. Jeremy is already working at the level of an advanced graduate student and has everything it takes to be successful."

"When students engage in research, they see the connections between what they are learning in class and what they are discovering in a laboratory - and those insights help them to see learning in a new light," said Audrey Cramer, director of the Life and Physical Sciences Undergraduate Research Center in the College. "They learn to think like scientists. I encourage more undergraduate students to participate with faculty in research."