University of Maryland students have developed a device to diagnose Alzheimer's before its symptoms are evident. It uses sounds to detect changes in the brainwaves of people with the disease. The achievement earned the seven team members — all sophomores at the A. James Clark School of Engineering — the top prize at the 2017 National Institutes of Health Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) challenge. The team won $20,000 for the portable, low-cost electroencephalogram (EEG) device. "This represents a monumental achievement, not simply for the engineering community, but for the wider world of human health research," Darryll J. Pines, dean of the engineering school, said in a press release. "Through collaborations with faculty and researchers across a range of disciplines, they have transformed ideas into innovation that could one day change how Alzheimer's and other diseases are diagnosed." The students, who call themselves the Synapto team, designed a special headset to create the device, which triggers sounds that can detect brainwave changes. The waves are compared with those of  healthy subjects “to create a machine-learning model that can then accurately predict the probability of the patient having the disease," said Dhruv Patel, a bioengineering student who is Synapto's captain. Team members are considering creating a company to further develop the device. "The end result is a noninvasive and relatively inexpensive tool with the potential to detect Alzheime