(From left) Professor David Thomison, Soroosh Farsiani, Mahla Hosseini and William Petty took home top honors at the 2025 Entrepreneur’s Cup.

OSU trio wins Entrepreneur’s Cup with groundbreaking 3D printing technology, campuswide effort

Monday, May 5, 2025

Media Contact: Stephen Howard | Director of Marketing & Communications | 405.744.4363 | stephen.howard@okstate.edu

The Oklahoma State University team of Soroosh Farsiani, Mahla Hosseini and William Petty took home top honors at the 2025 Entrepreneur’s Cup at the Will Rogers Theatre in Oklahoma City on April 22.

The Cowboy trio won the High Growth Graduate division of Oklahoma’s premier collegiate business plan competition — and its $21,000 top prize — on the strength of their product, SCIVINCE, a multi-axis, counter-gravity 3D printing technology that has the potential to revolutionize that industry.

A mashup of the words science and convenience, SCIVINCE is an innovation that enhances the functionality of 3D print products while reducing manufacturing costs, particularly in the aerospace, health care and automotive industries. SCIVINCE has multiple print heads capable of printing from all directions, allowing users to customize layer orientation and material placement throughout the part.

This advanced configuration enhances product strength and durability by 14%, delivers at least 20% faster and more efficient printing and empowers businesses to expand their offerings by manufacturing complex, multi-material designs that are impossible with current 3D printing technologies.

“Our goal was to create a design that enhanced the product strength and durability, and our research proved that we succeeded in that,” said Farsiani, a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology’s School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “But we also eliminated the need for a support structure in the printing process, which could save at least 15% on material, and in some cases, up to 50%. We can print from any direction, and we can print more complex geometries than printers currently on the market, which would allow our technology to print parts that are currently unprintable.”

SCIVINCE started as a conversation between Farsiani and Dr. Hadi Noori, a CEAT assistant professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Noori wondered if it might be possible to create a 3D printer that printed upside down, which current models can’t do. Existing printers have difficulty, for example, printing a hanging support structure or fixing a broken part from a unique angle.

“It gave us the idea to explore counter-gravity printing,” said Farsiani, who joined forces with Noori and a team of undergraduate students to tackle the problem.

Pictured is the SCIVINCE 3D printer prototype that Soroosh Farsiani and his team built on the OSU campus. — Soroosh Fasiani, Dr. Hadi Noori and a team of undergraduate students built this prototype of SCIVINCE on the OSU campus. The revolutionary design eliminates the need for support structures and can print in any direction.

Before long, they had a prototype that had the potential to change the way 3D printers operate. Now, they needed to turn the invention into a product.

The SCIVINCE team got in touch with John Nickel, the assistant director of Cowboy Technologies, who walked them through the patent process and introduced them to OSU’s National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Program. The goal of I-Corps is to help inventors discover the commercial potential of their creation through a customer discovery process that includes dozens of interviews with potential clients and entrepreneurial coaching.

While Noori’s mentorship was essential on the product development side, David Thomison quickly became Farsiani’s go-to advisor for business-related questions. The George Kaiser Family Foundation Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship, Thomison has decades of experience crafting business strategies and commercialization plans, which he put to work in helping Farsiani and SCIVINCE.

“I learned so much about the business aspects of this process, because as engineers, we have no idea — we don’t know anything,” Farsiani said. “The students and faculty at CEAT are developing so many good ideas and technologies, but because we don't know anything about the business side, we cannot even imagine that it could be commercialized.”

With the SCIVINCE project gaining steam, it was obvious to Farsiani that he needed help, especially on the business side. Thomison and Farsiani recruited Hosseini and Petty to join the team.

Hosseini has a knack for marketing, as well as a master’s degree in industrial engineering. She is also pursuing a second master’s degree in business and data science (MS BAnDS) from OSU, so she brings a unique skillset to the table. Hosseini was eager to put that combination of skills to work for SCIVINCE.

Over 200 potential SCIVINCE customers were interviewed during the I-Corps discovery process, so Hosseini went through them all to break down each business’s purchasing processes, timelines, requirements and budget plans to help SCIVINCE develop its marketing strategy.

“It was an honor that Soroosh trusted me to take responsibility on this project,” Hosseini said. “For me, it was a great experience, and we learned a lot.”

Petty is a Spears School of Business MBA student with an undergraduate degree in accounting from OSU. An entrepreneur himself, Petty is the co-founder of Bubble Calm, a stress-relieving chewing gum that won the undergraduate category of the Entrepreneur’s Cup in 2019.

A self-described “serial entrepreneur,” Petty helped develop the SCIVINCE executive summary and business plan with a focus on financials, investment strategy and business modeling.

“When I joined, I was impressed with how much had already been accomplished,” Petty said. “Soroosh had already won the Riata Center’s Business Plan Competition, so he already had a strong foundation of key business components. A lot of our work involved building on his ideas, which made the process easier for me, especially since I wasn't very familiar with 3D printing or the additive manufacturing market.”

Following last month’s victory in the state-level Entrepreneur’s Cup, the SCIVINCE team now has their sights set on national business plan competitions and further cultivating their product and business model.

They have applied for a Phase 1 Small Business Innovation Research grant that, if awarded, would give the SCIVINCE team $314,363 to further develop their prototype, its hardware and software, and expand the business side of the project.

“We are refining our business plan every day,” Farsiani said. “Two years ago, when this all started, I had no idea how to even talk to a person about my technology, or to even write about it in a way that could be interesting. I had no idea how to reach out to a potential customer. But now, based on what I learned in the business and entrepreneurship workshops, I learned how to bring the invention to market — and that's huge.”