15 teens with IQs of 155 or higher to be trained by top scientists in effort to groom new generation of leaders in scientific research. Fifteen high school students are currently undergoing strict training in a program designed to groom Israel’s first “team of geniuses”.
The tenth and eleventh graders were chosen by the Education Ministry to participate in the program, in which a highly respected scientist personally trains each of them to become future leaders in many of the scientific fields. Each member of the team possesses an IQ of 155 or higher, and the ministry hopes they will go on to become Nobel Prize laureates.
Israeli schools of all grades are currently said to contain around 12,000 students described by the Education Ministry as “gifted”, and around 10-15 in every graduating class are thought to possess an IQ higher than 155. The program is aimed at guaranteeing that their mental prowess be properly developed. The program was designed by the president of the Weizmann Institute, Daniel Zajfman. In order to find the students suitable for it, teachers were asked to recommend pupils they thought performed extraordinarily in class. The selected students are assigned a world-renowned scientist who commits to training them, and arrive for training at the institute in which he or she is employed for one day every two weeks. The scientists involve the teens in their work and train them in their field. Three times a year, the team is brought together for a cooperative session. Shlomit Rachmel, who heads the Education Ministry’s Department for Gifted Children, says the trainers were chosen discriminatingly. “These are researchers located at the forefront of science and are good role models for the students,” she said.
Ehud Duchovny of the Weizmann Institute is currently training an eleventh grader in Particle Physics, and helping him to achieve a degree in Mathematics.
“This is a very ambitious student with a high potential,” Duchovny says. He plans to incorporate the teen in his work on the largest particle accelerator in the world, located near Geneva. Last year, it hosted an international experiment on the Big Bang.
“The student will actively take part in an experiment I am conducting,” Duchovny says. “It even stands to reason that he will travel with me to Geneva to present the outcomes of the experiment. He is very excited.”
A special delegation of English Football Association members and English fans led by former England international footballer John Barnes arrived in Israel on Friday to promote a campaign aimed at kicking violence and racism out of football. The visit was organized by the Maccabi Association of Great Britain. As part of a three-day mission, climaxing with the match itself on Saturday night, the New Israel Fund delegation is hosting events including a visit to a co-existence project involving Hapoel Abu Ghosh-Mevaseret FC, a mixed Jewish-Arab team that plays in Israel ’s 4th division. The delegation then spent Monday in the Israeli Arab town of Sakhnin. “I’ve requested an urgent meeting with Trade Unions chairman Ofer Eini and will ask that the festivities will not be affected, so we don’t look like a Third World country,” the new IFA chairman Avi Luzon said.
