AGA Las Vegas Conference

Martin Rapaport, founder and chairman of the Rapaport Group, is a primary advocate for ethical, transparent, competitive and efficient diamond markets. The Rapaport Price List and RapNet trading network have transformed the diamond industry by providing global price, availability and trading transparency in a competitive environment.

Mr. Rapaport began his career in the diamond industry in 1975 as an apprenticediamond cleaver in Antwerp Belgium. In 1978, he established the RapaportDiamond Report, the primary source of diamond price and market information. In 1980, he created RapNet – The Rapaport Network, the first and world’s largest electronic diamond trading network. RapNet currently provides daily diamond listings of 930,000 diamonds worth over $6.2 billion dollars. It has over 7,000 members of the diamond trade in 80 countries.

David Block is CEO of the Sarine Technology Group, one of the world’s leading technology companies for the diamonds, gemstones and jewellery industries. Over the last 20 years at Sarine, David has played an instrumental role in the initiation, development and introduction of many of the revolutionary innovations the Group has brought to the diamond industry. Under his guidance, Sarine’s diamond planning systems have become the de facto standard for diamond manufacturing with over 70 million diamonds planned on these each year. In 2009,

David led the rollout of the unmatched Galaxy technology for rough diamond inclusion scanning, enabling diamond manufacturers for the first time ever to accurately consider the diamond’s Clarity as an integral automated part of the planning process. For the past few years, Block has been spearheading Sarine’s introduction of similarly uniquely innovative technologies further downstream – to the wholesale and retail trade of polished diamonds. Amongst these advances are notably the first technology based artificial intelligence driven polished diamond grading, the most complete and least disruptive end-to-end solution for diamond traceability, the emerging standard for light performance analysis, as well as other digital solutions to enable todays diamond retailers to better interact with their millennial customers.

David holds a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from the Kellogg-Recanati School of Business, a joint degree from Northwestern University in the U.S. and Tel Aviv University in Israel, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College in Israel.

During Dr. Yun Luo’s 10 years with GIA Research and Development, Yun has led her team to study the science of measurements related to diamond grading to align instruments with GIA grading standards. This process inspired her to develop resources, processes, and initiatives to ensure measurement quality and uphold GIA standards among all laboratories in the institution.

Yun earned her B.S. degree from the Gemmological Institute, China University of Geosciences in Wuhan, and studied environmental mineralogy for her Ph.D. degree at Miami University in Ohio.