Raquel Alonso-Perez, Curator of the Mineralogical and Geological Museum, Harvard University is responsible for access to, teaching, research, public education, and continued development of the world-class Earth Science collections at Harvard University.  She received her B.S. in geology from the University of Granada, Spain, and her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. Her teaching strengths are optical mineralogy and gemology and her main research interests are the geology and mineralogy of gem deposits.