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MIT Students Live, Work Inside Glass Cube For Four Days For 'Hackathon'

CAMBRIDGE (CBS) - Call it a challenge for MIT students to think inside the box.

Five MIT students will live and work inside a glass cube for four days as part of a "entrepreneurial hackathon," with a mission of solving an assigned "problem."

The glass cube is located on MIT's North Court between Vassar and Main streets in Cambridge, facing the Ray and Maria Stata Center.

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Five MIT students will live and work inside a glass cube for four days as part of a "entrepreneurial hackathon." (WBZ-TV)

The students were seen Thursday inside a nearby ambulance discussing blood-borne pathogens and how to insert an intravenous needle in a medical setting.

They will be working on a project that aims to improve medical care, said Bijoy Sagar, chief digital and technology officer for Stryker, a medical technology firm based in Michigan that is sponsoring the cube.

The company has presented a medical "problem" for the MIT students to solve in four days.

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MIT students are presented with a problem in a nearby ambulance, which they will then work on for four days inside a glass cube. (WBZ-TV)

"We are excited to see these students come up with new ways of improving the way that we transport, diagnose and possibly even treat a patient as quickly as possible, and this is life and death... I'm excited to see what could come out of this," Sagar said.

The cerebral challenge is part of InCube and co-organized by the MIT Innovation Initiative and ETH Entrepreneur Club, a student association based in Zurich, Switzerland.

"Through problem finding, ideation, prototyping and pitching, the interdisciplinary team of students - ranging from undergraduates to PhD candidates studying computer science, economics, chemistry, biology and medical engineering at MIT - will live the full entrepreneurial journey and work towards finding an innovative solution to their given challenge that could be turned into a successful startup," MIT said in a statement.

Similar hackathons are being held at universities across Switzerland. The MIT students will pitch their idea in front of a camera, which will be broadcast at the finale event in Zurich on Sept. 24.

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