Dr. Lore Kiefert

Director of Coloured Stones Department
SSEF Swiss Gemmological Institute
Falknerstrasse 9
CH-4054 Basel / Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 262 0640, Fax +41 61 262 06 41
e-mail: gemlab@ssef.ch

Dr. Kiefert was born in 1955 in Heidelberg, Germany. After 10 years of school, she had a period where working as telephone assistant and secretary alternated with further education, until she started studying Mineralogy in 1981. In 1987, she obtained her Master’s degree with a thesis about distinguishing characteristics of sapphires (natural vs. synthetic as well as different origins). After this, she changed direction and went to Australia for her PhD on the composition of desert dust.
Before Dr. Kiefert could complete her thesis, she started work at the SSEF Swiss Gemmological Institute in April 1994, back then in Zürich, later that year in Basel as Assistant Director.
Dr. Kiefert was awarded her PhD in 1996 and her FGA Diploma in Gemmology early 1998, and was appointed Director of the Coloured Stones Department in 2000.
Apart from numerous scientific and gemmological papers, Dr. Kiefert has contributed to the Handbook of Raman Spectroscopy and the Handbook of Raman Spectroscopy in Art and Archaeology. She lectured at numerous scientific and gemmological conferences in Australia, South Africa, the United States, London, Antwerp, Prague, Vienna, Leiden, Idar-Oberstein, and various places in Switzerland.
After almost 11 years, Dr. Kiefert is leaving the SSEF in February 2005 to start work at the AGTA Laboratory in New York as Gemological Science Supervisor.

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