Objective: Create an educational platform for the nourishment and development of the future scientists and inventors of the state of Israel. This program is designed to target two un-answered crucial demands that Israeli society faces. To encourage and excite the highly capable and motivated youth with scientific orientation, that currently are not living up to their potential. This is matched with the need to fortify and expand the scientific and innovative community in Israel to further establish its leading edge world wide.

Introduction: President Peres` vision for Israel as a leader in science and innovative technology led to a national initiative for the promotion of the future scientists and inventors of Israel. Recognized as a goal of high priority, this project draws leading delegates of Israel's academic community, educational professionals and top rank of entrepreneurs and industrial leaders, and the RASHI Foundation, with the future of Israel at heart. Together with the president's secretariat, legal aids and advisors, the national platform is slowly taking shape.

The Dov Lautman Youth Education Unit at Tel Aviv University was the first one to rise to the challenge, and the first pilot program, was launched at Tel Aviv University in July 2009. Similar projects are been planned for summer 2011 at the Technion, the Hebrew University and at the Weismann Institute.

The Youth Education Unit at TAU, has vast experience with youngsters from all variations in the Israeli society. Specifically it has 10 years successfully introduced teenagers to academic education, supported by world leading entrepreneur Gil Shwed. Thus, education professionals, researchers and scientists at TAU joined in to formulate a ground breaking new conceptual approach.

The program encompasses 3 phases of the student: the high-school years, through military service, leading into research and innovation, both in the academy or industry. Here we focus on the first phase, which is very intense.

Methods:

The first stage is to reach out and recruit the relevant population. Based on the Unit's experience, we have targeted 8^th grade graduates, from all sectors of Israeli society, that desperately seek intellectual challenges and are unable to find them in their own environment.

We believe teenagers should not be cut off from their natural habitat, which is a requisite for their normal development. Thus we have designed this program to provide a complementary framework. It emphasizes positive social behavior, creating an active learning community and friendship.

Our assumption is that the essential "toolbox" for a future scientist or inventor is encapsulated in university physics with all its attributes. Besides the basic knowledge of physics, it requires basic university mathematics. It demands from the pupil systematic, abstractive, analytic and creative thinking.

On top of the intellectual challenges, the study of physics encourages our youth to master necessary skills such as: good time management and regime, personal responsibility, accuracy and attention, hard work, facing disappointment and overcoming failure, communicating with colleagues and asking for help.

We hypothesize that although some of these attributes might present great challenge to these teenagers, that usually navigate through school bored and with no effort – with the right program, they can make it and ask for more.

We defined two basic exclusion criteria from the program. The first is extreme inappropriate behavior, towards a fellow pupil, faculty member or equipment. The second is academic incompetence – either low grades or appropriate scholar performance.

Our rational is that exceptional teachers can lead these youngsters to take part and succeed in undergraduate classical physics courses, within two years in the program. Combined with continuous exposure to role models in the industry and in scientific research, and good mentoring, we propose that the program could enable our pupils to actually join research laboratories by year3, and even make a small contribution of their own. 

Results:

Our preliminary results are very encouraging. We have tested about 200 pupils for this program, for the second year in a row. We have enlisted 45 8^th graders in first year and 35 8^th graders in the second year, to an academic "boot-camp" summer-school at the TAU campus.

In the current academic year we have 2 classes in the program: 17 freshmen and 19 sophomores. They manage to maintain their high-school performance and some other extracurricular and social activities.

For the first time in their lives they have to study hard, face failure and ask for help. They learn to be accountable for their actions and choices.

They could be classified into 4 groups according to their performance gradients. Positive gradients (above our threshold) are of 3 classes: high rising, steady slopes or late bloomers. The 4^th group is the near zero or negative gradients, which are dismissed from the program. There is also a fraction that decides to leave the program for personal reasons.

The sophomores have joined standard university courses in the faculties of exact sciences, engineering, life sciences and mathematics. They are expected to join research laboratories, by the end of the academic year.

Conclusion:

We present our pilot of a pioneer program for physics education as a basic "toolbox" for research and innovation.  The first implementation of our concepts shows the most promising initial results. As it evolves and expands nation-wide, it may reveal more insights into rediscovering Israel's human capital - the development of the future scientists and inventors.