It’s a bit surprising that just last year, there wasn’t a cohesive record of where to find automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in U.S. cities. Lucky for us, Pitt’s own fourth-year bioengineering PhD student Emily Bayer found 507 of the heart-jolting devices throughout Allegheny County in October 2014.

An ongoing, multicity crowdsourcing project called HeartMap challenges citizens to find defibrillators in their respective cities and report back, so HeartMap can create a central database to aid emergency services (including 911 operators). A Pitt/University of Washington team of emergency medicine researchers will also be probing the data.

Bayer followed some pretty interesting leads: “It was amazing to learn about all the different types of people who have used these devices to save lives in Pittsburgh—from police officers to Boy Scouts to a ticket scalper who just happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

How did Bayer get to claim HeartMap’s $5,000 grand prize? By “setting a goal . . . to find at least 20 to 30 a day and spending two to three hours a night following leads.”