A small project begun at Auburn in 2019 to quickly return injured Auburn football players to the playing field may soon return injured soldiers to the battlefield.
XO Armor, a company pioneering on-site 3D printing for custom-fitting protective orthotics for dozens of professional and college-level sports teams, has been named to the inaugural cohort of the Montgomery TechLab’s (MTL) Defense Accelerator. The selection reflects XO Armor’s strategic growth into the defense sector, where it hopes to leverage its innovative technology to address critical military needs.
Born from research within the Auburn University Biomechanical Engineering Laboratory (AUBE Lab), XO Armor’s adaptable technology has expanded beyond its initial applications in the athletics arena to use-case scenarios in generalized health care and, more recently, military preparedness.
The company’s ability to rapidly produce custom-fit devices on-site aligns well with the U.S. Army’s adoption of additive manufacturing as a vital tool in overcoming challenges in supplying and sustaining military operations in contested logistics environments.
Michael Zabala, Auburn Alumni Engineering Council associate professor, is XO Armor’s founder and chief research officer. (contributed)
Michael Zabala, Auburn Alumni Engineering Council associate professor, is XO Armor’s founder and chief research officer. (contributed)
Similar concerns specific to combat systems have recentlydriven millions of dollars in Army investment into Auburn’s broader additive manufacturing research.
The eight-week MTL Defense Accelerator program offers XO Armor the opportunity to broaden its engagement across the Department of Defense.
“The companies selected for our first defense accelerator cohort demonstrate incredible promise to strengthen our nation’s defense posture while growing Alabama’s innovation economy,” said Charisse Stokes, executive director of TechMGM and partner liaison for Montgomery TechLab.
Joe Bingold, XO Armor CEO, said the MTL Defense Accelerator will help the Auburn-based company facilitate connections with the U.S. Air Force.
“This program not only increases our interaction with the Department of Defense stakeholders but also helps us refine our business model and strategic approach to commercialization,” Bingold said. “As a Navy veteran, I am impressed by the new level of collaboration we are seeing across the different sectors within the Department of Defense. Accelerator programs like Montgomery TechLab are truly making an impact for the sustainability of our military forces.”
Michael Zabala, Auburn Alumni Engineering Council associate professor, AUBE Lab director and XO Armor’s founder and chief research officer, calls the potential of the company’s new partnerships “a powerful example of how Auburn Engineering research can translate into real-world impact.”
“To see something that began in the AUBE Lab as an effort to help Auburn football players now growing into a technology that can directly support the U.S. military makes me pretty proud,” he said.
New Venture Accelerator startup, Planet of Snacks, brings home the 2nd Place Prize from the SEC Student-Athlete Business Idea Pitch Competition.
Craving a taste of Italian potato chips? How about a handful of Soletti Salzstangerl pretzel sticks from Austria, or even Greek Joyva chocolate-covered halvah?
If so, two Auburn University students have you covered.
Judges at the second SEC Start-Up — a pitch competition for student-athletes — were sold as Ranier and Heary (swimming and diving) were awarded second place and $8,000. Ranier and Heary previously won second place and $20,000 at Tiger Cage on March 28, Auburn University’s premier student business pitch competition hosted by the Harbert College of Business.
“When we represent Auburn, we’re really representing people who have invested time and interest into what we’re doing,” said Heary, who spent the summer interning at Cisco Systems in Austin, Texas. “Using what we’ve learned at the New Venture Accelerator and with all the resources we can access — including support from international programs and student leaders — everything we’re doing is rooted in Auburn. It makes us proud to show appreciation for the people who’ve helped us.”
Harrison said being positioned to represent Auburn on a national stage was “incredible.”
“If you told me a year ago where we’d be today, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Ranier said. “It shows what Auburn is all about, what it offers and what it can do for you through the entrepreneurship program and the lessons learned through our coursework.”
The SEC Start-Up, held June 18 in Birmingham, was aired by the SEC Network on Monday, July 14. Contestants were allotted five minutes to present and five minutes for questions and answers before a panel of four judges, including former Auburn basketball star Daymeon Fishback.
“That was so much different than Tiger Cage,” Ranier said. “At Tiger Cage, we stayed and watched all the other pitches. That helped us feel better and see what we could improve for the next round. This time, we couldn’t watch anyone, so we had no way to compare ourselves.”
Pitch time was only five minutes, so Heary and Harrison had to make each second count.
“The main messages we shared were we sell that widest variety of snack boxes on the internet and that we’re trying to connect cultures through snacks,” Heary said. “We drilled those points.”
Having secured $28,000 in funding through Tiger Cage and the SEC Start-Up, Harrison and Heary are shifting focus from pitching to growing the business.
“We’re moving on to the real competition,” Heary said. “We’re slowing down after these investment pitches, looking at what we’ve built and what we need to refine.”
The team is developing plans to enhance the product’s user experiences with new display templates by adding inserts to the snack boxes, featuring icebreakers, fun activities, nutrition facts and cultural tidbits.
“We received feedback from the judges at the SEC Start-Up that we need to make our boxes more fun and represent what we’re doing, like connecting cultures through snacks,” he said. “We’re trying to do a little bit of a box rebranding right now to display what our values are, which is home and comfort.”
Auburn students are no strangers to success at SEC-level entrepreneurship competitions. Mechanical engineering graduate students Allison Tanner, David Edmondson and David Hollinger (track and field) won the inaugural SEC Start-Up in July 2024 for their business plan, The Digital Athlete (now known as “Stride Sync.”)
Want to support Planet of Snacks, Auburn University’s latest student-led business startup? Visit Planet of Snacks for a detailed, global inventory from Japanese Matcha Kit Kats and Korean Choco Pies to British crisps and Thai Lay’s in flavors not found in local grocery stores. To order, click on a snack box to learn more, then press “add to cart” when ready.
Customers are also encouraged to sign up for monthly subscription boxes filled with surprise snacks from around the globe.
Auburn NVA-founded NanoPrintek’s Masoud Mahjouri-Samani rides the Vomit Comet —taking advanced additive manufacturing capabilities to new heights
It is one thing to believe that the intricately complex, critically important invention you’ve toiled over for years as a leading research engineer at Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering will work in the zero-gravity world of space just as phenomenally well as it performs here on earth.
It is quite another thing to actually prove it – on your first try.
That’s exactly what NanoPrintek founder Masoud Mahjouri-Samani accomplished a few weeks ago as he rode the Vomit Comet over two days of parabolic flight sessions designed to test the capabilities of his unique, self-contained dry-nanoparticle additive manufacturing system in a zero gravity environment.
The results? Mission Accomplished!
“Our machine works flawlessly in zero gravity with no issue whatsoever,” reported Masoud. “Proving that capability was Mission Objective Number One – and we accomplished it in flying colors. We tested and documented a one hundred percent success rate – one hundred percent! We couldn’t be more pleased to see our expectations confirmed.”
The New Venture Accelerator sat down with Masoud upon his “re-entry” to get an update on how it all went – what transpired as expected, what surprised him and what’s next as he fields growing demand for both his company’s advanced, developmental units as well as their production-ready commercial systems.
Our discussion revealed an extraordinarily powerful partnership growing between Auburn University, NanoPrintek, and NASA – a relationship that is not only serving AU’s research portfolio in space, but also helps NanoPrintek’s own business development prospects while contributing unprecedented value to NASA.
Importantly, it also bolsters the NVA’s mission to help grow promising new ventures at Auburn.
NVA: Let’s start with what it was like – the process of it all, beginning with the preparations you and your team took even before your first flight.
Masoud: First, we had to get our specially designed, compact system to the test flight site in Kansas and we certainly didn’t want to ship it, so we drove 15 hours to get there. Once we got there, we tested the machine on the ground before loading it onto the airplane just to make sure everything was working – to make sure the long drive did not create any issues.
And then we loaded the instrument into the plane and we tested the machine with the plane powered up on the ground before we flew to confirm that our machine worked within the airplane – power source, interference, stability, etc. Everything checked out perfectly, and off we went!
NVA: So, the machine is secured to the floor of the aircraft, right? And then you proceed to conduct these up and down parabolic flights, giving you about 25 seconds of time in each cycle to use the machine to print patterns for circuitry – is 25 seconds enough time to test?
Masoud: Well, the first thing is that we were promised about 20-25 seconds of weightlessness per parabolic cycle – about 30 of them. You can get a lot done in this time, believe it or not.
Secondly, we had pre-programmed our machine to perform meaningful executions of specific lines and patterns within these 25 second intervals – different patterns, the same patterns at different thicknesses, using different materials, that sort of thing – each program timed to fit within those tight windows.
We designed some lines, antennas and different shapes, basically very small shapes. And then we calculated the time it’ll take for these to complete and we adjusted that to fall exactly within a given parabolic cycle.
NVA: Why was this demonstration of executing relatively “simple” lines and patterns in zero gravity so important?
Masoud: Simple, yes – one would think – but we can’t confuse “simple” with “easy.” Remember, we were trying to show that laying down metal lines, patterns, antennas, etc., is the first step in being able to make fully formed circuits and other components in space.
Why is that important?
If we can do that, we can later print semiconductors, dielectrics, composite, etc. If the machine is capable of printing all these elements in space, now you can print all the components that make up different kinds of devices. Various types of functional devices can now be printed in zero or reduced gravity.
Just think back to Apollo 13 and imagine if they needed to replace a malfunctioning circuit critical to their survival in space, on the moon, or on Mars.
There’s no time to ship something up there, is there? There’s no supply chain in space.
With our machine, we just went up there, clicked the button, and away we went. It’s like our machine doesn’t even care where it is. It just prints as directed!
Our machine is literally a complete, self-contained supply chain in space for manufacturing functional components and devices critical to the lives and missions of astronauts in space.
NVA: So now that you’ve gathered what I assume must be a ton of data, what’s next?
Masoud: Yes, we have, and as we speak, we are analyzing all that data, all the prints we made in zero gravity, to see what the difference is in term of materials science. What is the difference between the one that we printed on the ground and the one that we printed in zero gravity? Are they the same? Are they better? Are they worse? We are working on all those things now.
NVA: What’s next for you and NanoPrintek?
Masoud: To begin with, we are going back up again this same time next year. In the meantime, we are busy going through our analyses of various aspects of what we found – confirmation of our machine’s performance parameters on earth and in zero gravity, deviations from expectations, new discoveries – it is a very detailed process.
One thing I will say from a competitive standpoint, though, is that there have been reports of machines using other approaches having to make multiple flights over multiple days before being able to print even one line!
On the other hand, the next time we fly we might print some semiconductors. We printed both copper and silver this time, next time we will be experimenting with printing other materials as well. And then there’s the potential impact of the vacuum of space on printing. On the moon, for example.
NVA: So, you need to test in both zero gravity and the vacuum of space at the same time. How do you do that?
Masoud: Let’s just say we have plans for that – again, we don’t want to discuss those plans at this time.
NVA: On a somewhat different note, the last time we spoke, you were in the process of responding to tremendous interest from research institutions and commercial enterprises alike. How is that going?
Masoud: Very well. Since we last talked, when I told you that we’d just finished an installation at a high-profile research institution, we have been working with multiple prospective customers in both research and commercial markets.
Interestingly, these two seemingly diverse aspects of our application and commercialization focus are tightly intertwined in ways I hadn’t fully anticipated. The marketing value of this most recent demonstration goes well beyond space applications.
It turns out that this zero-gravity test was a great trigger for other customers across all potential uses and applications. They see this machine as going “above and beyond” all others – a very highly qualified, robust machine.
The value of this proof point and what we learned in zero gravity is certainly a huge brand builder and helps raise the visibility and reputation for the unparalleled performance our machine delivers and the expertise of the company itself.
It is also showing the ability of our machine to work in a variety of other remote, harsh environments – including battlefield and other hostile scenarios.
It is like what they say about New York City – “I we can make it there; we can make it anywhere!”
And so, we will.
To learn more about NanoPrintek, contact Masoud Mahjouri Samani at [email protected]
To learn more about Auburn University’s New Venture Accelerator, contact Lou Bifano at [email protected]
AUBURN, Ala. (June 4, 2025) – Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, Inc. (UNITED) held a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony today to celebrate its new Auburn Coca-Cola sales center and warehouse – an investment of approximately $18 million that the company says brings value to its associates, customers and consumers in East Alabama.
At about 24,000 square feet, Auburn Coca-Cola Bottling Company sits on approximately 15 acres off West Veterans Boulevard and includes a sales center, warehouse and office space. The facility serves as a hub to distribute products to customers and communities throughout Chambers, Coosa, Lee, Macon, Randolph, and Tallapoosa counties.
Coca-Cola UNITED held a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony June 4 to celebrate its new Auburn Coca-Cola sales center and warehouse.
“Today marks an exciting new chapter for our team,” Auburn Coca-Cola Sales Center Manager Allen Buffington said in ceremony remarks. “This facility reflects our longstanding commitment to refresh and serve the communities and consumers of East Alabama with excellence and hometown pride.”
Coca-Cola UNITED President and CEO Mike Suco, Auburn Mayor Ron Anders and Auburn Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Anna Hovey were also present to deliver remarks.
“Our business is big on relationships,” Suco said. “Our relationships with Auburn University, local businesses and the broader community are essential to who we are and how we work, and we’re excited for the opportunities ahead.”
Auburn Coca-Cola joined the Coca-Cola UNITED family of bottlers in 2023, employing approximately 75 associates, serving more than 1,000 customers and selling and distributing nearly 3 million cases of Coke products annually.
“I’m proud to officially welcome Coca-Cola UNITED and its employees to the Auburn family,” Anders said. “We are grateful for Coca-Cola’s investment in our community and are excited to see this new facility come to life. We look forward to a lasting and strong partnership moving forward.”
“The Auburn Chamber is thankful for Coca-Cola’s longstanding membership and partnership,” Hovey said. “We are excited to celebrate the opening of this new building and thankful for the physical presence of Coca-Cola UNITED’s investment in Auburn.”
Auburn Coca-Cola joined the Coca-Cola UNITED family of bottlers in 2023, employing approximately 75 associates, serving more than 1,000 customers and selling and distributing nearly 3 million cases of Coke products annually. Coca-Cola has had a presence in East Alabama since 1902, with previous bottling operations in Alexander City, Opelika and Tuskegee.
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About Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, Inc.
Coca-Cola Bottling Company United, Inc. (UNITED), founded in 1902 and headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, is among the largest bottlers and distributors of Coke products in the U.S. Now with its fifth generation of family working in the business, Coca-Cola UNITED has more than 10,000 associates located in more than 50 facilities across six southeastern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee). Historically significant franchises within our Coca-Cola UNITED family include Chattanooga, the world’s first Coca-Cola bottler; Atlanta, home of the worldwide Coca-Cola System; and Columbus, Georgia, development site of the original Coca-Cola formula.
Coca-Cola UNITED is engaged in the production, marketing, and distribution of a diverse portfolio of leading sparkling (Coca-Cola®, Diet Coke®, Coke Zero Sugar®, Dr Pepper®, Sprite® and Fanta®) and still (smartwater®, vitaminwater®, Dasani®, POWERADE®, BODYARMOR®, Fairlife®, Gold Peak®, Monster® and Minute Maid®) non-alcoholic brands under exclusive franchise agreements principally with The Coca-Cola Company®, Keurig Dr Pepper® and Monster Energy Company®.
For more than 120 years, Coca-Cola UNITED has remained true to its foundational core values of Quality, Excellence, Integrity and Respect. Local relationships, personalized customer service and strong community engagement have been the foundation of our business for more than a century. Each year, millions of dollars are invested in our local communities, supporting education, community development, sustainability and nonprofit organizations that empower and impact those in need. Learn more at cocacolaunited.com and follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).
AUBURN, Ala.- The cities of Auburn and Opelika recently received the 2025 Mac Conway Award for Economic Development Excellence, presented by Site Selection Magazine. Named after Site Selection Founder McKinley “Mac” Conway, the award honors top-performing economic development organizations across the country. The Auburn-Opelika area was one of two Alabama regions to receive the award.
To determine this year’s award winners, Site Selection evaluated cities based on corporate facility project, investment and job creation numbers; Milken Institute’s Best Performing Cities Index; and Heartland Forward’s 2025 Most Dynamic Cities report.
“Auburn has firmly established itself as a leader in economic growth in Alabama and the U.S.,” said Auburn Mayor Ron Anders. “With the strength of Auburn University and a vibrant, forward-thinking business community, Auburn is well-positioned for continued success. We’re proud of the collaboration that drives our momentum and excited about the opportunities ahead.”
In 2024 alone, the City of Auburn announced three new company locations and six company expansions. These projects brought in 350 jobs and nearly $182 million in capital investment.
