News & Events
FaceBase Achieves CoreTrustSeal Certification (26 March 2025)
FaceBase has officially been awarded the CoreTrustSeal certification. This recognition affirms our commitment to maintaining a trusted, sustainable, and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data repository for the dental, oral, and craniofacial research community.
The CoreTrustSeal is an internationally recognized certification that evaluates data repositories based on 16 rigorous requirements related to sustainability, data integrity, and long-term accessibility.
This milestone reflects our ongoing efforts to support open science, facilitate data sharing, and enhance research reproducibility.
To learn more about the CoreTrustSeal certification and what it means for FaceBase, visit CoreTrustSeal or read our CoreTrustSeal application.
Join us at AADOCR in New York City this week! (11 March 2025)
If you’re at AADOCR conference in New York City at the Javits Center this week, come say Hi!
Exhibit Hall: Booth #124: March 13-15, 9am to 5pm We’ll have new merch and FaceBase team members who would love to answer your questions, give demos and talk about your data.
Also:
NIDCR Trainee Poster session: Room 1A08 - March 12, 9am to 12pm Alejandro Bugacov will have a poster and a table where he can talk one on one with postdocs and give demos
Registration is open for the FaceBase 2025 Community Forum! (07 March 2025)
Join this us this summer for one-and-a-half days of advances in data science, cutting-edge technologies, and cross-disciplinary collaborations in dental, oral, craniofacial, and related research in beautiful Marina del Rey, CA! We’ll convene at the USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) on June 3 & 4.
This year’s theme is Enabling and Expanding the Reach of Craniofacial Research: Building Connections and Supporting Reuse. We will explore how data sharing and integration can enhance dental, oral and craniofacial research, with a focus on maximizing data reuse, bridging preclinical and clinical research, and expanding interdisciplinary collaborations into related regions such as the inner ear and related domains such as pain management.
Call for Posters!
There will be in-person poster presentations this year. Use the registration form to indicate that you want to present a poster.
Submission abstracts are due by May 16.
Topics for posters:
-
We encourage submissions of clinical/translational cases, ML/AI and training scenarios as well as basic science that indicate scientific progress or accomplishments that advance FaceBase aims.
-
Demonstration of how FaceBase data is used or reused for new scientific insights.
-
Posters should include data/research that has been or will be submitted to FaceBase.
You can find full poster information on this PDF.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Marina del Rey! Click to download the flyer below and share!! And if you have any questions, please send them to help@facebase.org.
Creating protection for children and adolescents using FaceBase data (04 November 2024)
In the Fall of 2021, FaceBase launched a monthly series of “Office Hours” to support researchers and clinicians from the dental, oral and craniofacial (DOC) community - and beyond. These sessions are open to anyone seeking guidance on how to use FaceBase data or contribute to its expanding collection of multi-modal datasets. During our first Office Hours session, Christopher Nemeth, PhD, of Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) contacted us seeking available craniofacial data for children and adolescents.
Dr. Nemeth is the Principal Investigator on an effort funded by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to assess the feasibility of designing elastomeric, reusable respirators for children – a critical need that the COVID-19 pandemic made especially evident. While respirators are typically designed for adults. ARA sought to create respirator models that serve children. Dr. Nemeth met with Alejandro Bugacov, FaceBase’s “data guru”, to discuss relevant data resources that could help.
A few datasets immediately came to mind, including the 3D Facial Norms dataset from Seth Weinberg (University of Pittsburgh) and a dataset of facial scans from a Tanzanian cohort from Benedikt Hallgrimsson (University of Calgary). Bugacov facilitated a direct connection between Drs. Nemeth and Hallgrimsson to discuss a potential collaboration. Hallgrimsson was excited to participate in this project for many reasons:
-
This project was a great example of Precision Medicine and how multi-variations can be used to influence the design of respirators, which are greatly affected by facial sizes and shapes.
-
As a member of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research, he was keenly interested in projects that help underserved populations such as children.
-
This was a practical application of data that no one had considered before. His lab was excited about the prospect of directly helping people with their research!
Over a year of project work, Hallgrimsson’s lab developed a new approach for shape analysis to create the data that are essential for accurate, equitable designs for children age 2 –18. The team has now published its findings in Applied Ergonomics. The paper, Quantitative Analysis of Facial Shape in Children to Support Respirator Design, offers valuable recommendations for designing devices, including respirators, specifically tailored to fit the pediatric population. The hope is that their research will lay the groundwork for the first prototypes of a new generation of reusable respirators for children.
Citation:
Nemeth, C., Hoskens, H., Wilson, G., Jones, M., DiPietrantonio, J., Salami, B., Harnish, D., Claes, P., Weinberg, S. M., Shriver, M. D., & Hallgrímsson, B. (2025). Quantitative analysis of facial shape in children to support respirator design. Applied Ergonomics, 122, 104375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2024.104375
Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for respiratory protection against airborne pathogens. Respirator options for children are limited, and existing designs do not consider differences in facial shape or size. We created a dataset of children’s facial images from three cohorts, then used geometric morphometric analyses of dense and sparse facial landmark representations to quantify age, sex and ancestry-related variation in shape. We found facial shape and size in children vary significantly with age from ages 2 to 18, particularly in dimensions relevant to respirator design. Sex differences are small throughout most of the age range of our sample. Ancestry is associated with significant facial shape variation in dimensions that may affect respirator fit. We offer guidance on how results can be used for the appropriate design of devices such as respirators for pediatric populations. We also highlight the need to consider ancestry-related variation in facial morphology to promote equitable, inclusive products.
Takeaways:
This collaboration highlights FaceBase’s versatility as a data-sharing platform. Even though our primary focus is to partner with the dental, oral and craniofacial (DOC) community, researchers from other domains can also benefit from this unique collection of high-quality, interoperable multi-modal data of the face and head.
Acknowledgement: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) had no role in study design; collection, analysis and interpretation of data; writing of the report; or in the decision to submit the article for publication. This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Office of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, under Contract No. HHSO100201700032C
Save the Date: 2025 FaceBase Community Forum (08 October 2024)
We are pleased to announce that the 2025 FaceBase Community Forum will be held on June 3 and 4 at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) in Marina del Rey, CA. This day-and-a-half event will feature invited speakers, panels, and a poster session, offering a platform for the ddental, oral and craniofacial research community to collaborate and share their work.
Mark your calendar now! Bookmark this page for more details about the agenda and registration when they become available.