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Fifteen-year-old twins Tom and Roee Snir spent their summer vacations examining human DNA, constructing electronic devices, and observing the behavior of chimpanzees in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo.

While some children are hard pressed to leave their living-room couches during vacation, the Snir boys delved into the world of advanced math and science by participating in an "exploration camp" at the Israel Arts and Science Academy, a Jerusalem high school for gifted youth.

The summer program further inspired Tom and Roee to pursue their dreams of helping the country by entering a science-related field when they are older.

Tom is undecided but is considering working in computers. Roee hopes to become a pilot and an astronaut.

The 10-day camp is the pinnacle of the academy's Excellence 2000 outreach project, which recently expanded its after-school enrichment program to include 3,000 of the country's brightest pupils in some 85 communities nationwide.

The project trains math and science teachers in the academy's philosophy, methodology, materials and techniques, and then sends them back to their schools to run programs like the one Tom and Roee, who are residents of Pardess Hanna, attended at the Mevo'ot Irron School in Kibbutz Ein Shemer.

Last year's program focused on space, which fueled Roee's interest. He learned about astronomy, visited the space observatory in Givatayim and built a functional rocket out of an empty 1.5-liter bottle of Coca-Cola.

"For some kids the astronomy lecture might have been boring, but for me it was very interesting," he says. "I know it sounds corny, but the excellence project has really inspired me to fly high and reach the stars."

One of the project's features is that rather than just lecture, teachers guide students through complex science experiments and math problems, helping them acquire the cognitive skills to solve them on their own.

Teachers are also taught to recruit the most curious students for the program — the ones who most want to learn, not necessarily those with the best grades.

Excellence 2000 has been so successful that it has become the model for two similar projects in the United States.

The speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, Michael Madigan, took an interest in the program last year and helped secure funding to introduce a pilot version of the program in six Illinois schools. Oklahoma's governor, Frank Keating, later followed suit with 10 schools.

Excellence 2000 director-general Hezki Arieli went to Illinois last spring to introduce the model to representatives of the Illinois Math and Science Academy, who will operate the program. A team of teachers and administrators from Illinois visited Israel in the fall.

However, despite his overseas success, Arieli emphasizes that the primary objective of the Society for Excellence Through Education, which administers the Excellence 2000 program, is to double its size in Israel, not to expand worldwide.

"The goal of the program is to reach children, especially in peripheral areas, and give them the tools to develop their minds," Arieli says.

A program like Excellence 2000 is especially needed today, Arieli says, because of the economy's increasing emphasis on technology, and in light of the widening gap between sectors with access to technology and poor areas with less access, generally far from the center of the country.

The program is deliberately run on a voluntary basis, without homework or tests, to ease the burden on students, and not make them feel they have to carry the country on their shoulders just yet.

"Students come of their own free will to see the beauty of math and science," Arieli says. "The whole approach is very open and experiential. It becomes an adventure."

The excellence program can be found in religious and secular schools in Jewish, Arab and Druze communities throughout the country. It is a one-size-fits-all program, built to meet the needs of all sectors, mirroring the surprisingly successful pluralism of IASA.

IASA was founded 10 years ago by American philanthropist Bob Asher, to promote the principles of excellence, leadership and community responsibility.

With 210 veteran Israeli and new-immigrant students from more than 100 cities, towns, villages, and kibbutzim, IASA officials call it "the most integrated school in the country." A visit to the school's campus on the edge of the capital, near the Jerusalem Technology Park, reveals diversity is more than just a slogan there. Arab pupils indeed live and learn with religious Jews, regardless of their differences.

The academy accepts students on the basis of merit, giving scholarship assistance to 90 percent of the student body. Each student is required to do community service in local charities to learn social responsibility.

Excellence 2000 was developed for seventh- through ninth-graders in order to make the curriculum and methodology of IASA available to a greater base of students.

Irit Dromi, the Snir brothers' science teacher at the Mevo'ot Irron School, first heard about the program when the school was searching for activities for gifted pupils.

The school has a mix of children raised in Israel as well as those who recently emigrated from Russia, Ethiopia and Argentina.

"We have always had programs for children who have difficulty in school, but over the last few years, we felt an increasing need to provide special programs for gifted children as well," Dromi says. "Special education is not just for weak students. Gifted children need special education, too."

Dromi began implementing the Excellence 2000 program three years ago with 20 seventh-graders. It has since expanded to 55 children in seventh to ninth grades.

Using the former name of the project, Dromi describes her teaching method as an "exploration program." She acts as a guide, allowing her pupils to discover information about the world without having to be told, thereby developing their talents and learning skills.

The Weizmann Institute of Science contributes to the program, supplying a mobile science library for demonstrations in classes.