Hello everyone. My name is Sandra Götzer from the Clinical Prototype Analysis Center at ETH Zirig. And today I would like to provide you with our perspective on how we think mass spectrometry can generally be applied to accelerate the development and translation of biomarkers into clinical essays. Molecular biomarkers derived from, for instance, genetic variants, transcripts, proteins, and or metabolites play key roles in, for instance, clinical oncology. Their molecular signatures can help predict the likelihood of cancer development or progression and they have the potential to detect the disease at an early stage. They can also support treatment decision-making and predict treatment responsiveness. On the level of the protein, numerous research grade biomarker signatures have been known for years, however, as striking discrepancy exists between the efforts to develop new protein biomarkers and the numbers that is eventually clinically approved. One major reason for this discrepancy is that testing of protein biomarker candidates in a large-scale validation study poses an enormous organizational and financial challenge that hampers translation into a clinical grade essay. To overcome limitations in translational biomarker research, we think that various technologies should be combined in a time and cost-efficient manner. On the one hand, there are ELISAs, which are broadly established and routinely used for clinical protein quantification. ELISAs are robust and accurate and can be produced at low cost. Also, automation provides high throughput. However, an ELISAs success relies on the availability of highly specific and sensitive monoclonal antibodies and the multiplexing capability of ELISAs is somewhat limited. This makes the technology unsuitable for large-scale biomarker screening. Modern mass spectrometry-based proteomics, on the other hand, enables multiple protein marker measurements in parallel with adequate sensitivity and without the need for highly specific antibodies. However, mass spectrometry is costly, often semi-quantitative, time-consuming and technically challenging for routine diagnostic point-of-care applications. Here, we would like to suggest a mass spectrometry-guided immuno-SA development strategy, short MS-GUIDE, which combines the strength of MS-analyzed throughput with measurement throughput of the ELISAs, so kind of combining the best of the two worlds. MS-GUIDE consists of a two-step strategy wherein a first step A, pre-qualified literature-harvested potential biomarker candidates, can be evaluated for which no high-quality antibodies exist. We call this first step the verification phase. Targeted mass spectrometry using parallel reaction monitoring is used to measure potential protein markers in a highly multiplexed fashion in a medium-sized training cohort. ELISAs can then be developed in a second step of phase B for a small subset of pre-qualified biomarker candidates, which have shown clinical potential and then used for significance testing and validation in a larger patient cohort. So again, it is the combination of the best of the two worlds, going from analyte throughput to sample throughput, which is in the end required for the eventual SA approval. We employed and benchmarked our MS-GUIDE strategy on a prostate cancer patient cohort. The goal there was to identify a prognostic protein stratification panel for men with localized prostate cancer for a better risk assessment of disease aggressiveness. Clinical routine and prostate cancer diagnosis comprises the determination of prostate specific antigen levels, short PSA in blood. If the PSA level is elevated, a tissue biopsy is taken to further confirm the cancer diagnosis. The tissue biopsy gleason score is then used to classify the grade of cancer aggressiveness. Clinically localized prostate cancer can be controlled by curative radical prostatectomy. Still around 40% of all surgically treated men will experience a detectable serum PSA increase as a clear indicator of cancer progression or metastasis. So there is the need to identify novel markers that are specifically indicating the presence of a biologically aggressive prostate cancer to improve treatment outcome. Blood or serum is an attractive source of biomarker discovery as it is easily accessible and the prostate cancer secreted proteins have been prioritized as biomarker candidates because even localized prostate cancer is genetically highly variable and biopsy-based sampling is usually random, making accurate stratification of disease based on tissue biopsies alone quite difficult. So our goal here was to develop a serum risk stratification test to improve prediction outcome. As first part of step A of MS-GUIDE, we pre-selected potential biomarker proteins related to cancer aggressiveness. For that we mainly focused on secreted serum proteins which we had previously identified using a P10 knockout mouse model. P10 inhibits the PI3K act pathway and loss of this tumor suppressor is one of the best characterized genomic events in prostate cancer. The loss of P10 is strongly associated with unfavorable oncologic outcomes making P10 and its downstream targets potentially useful markers for distinguishing indolent from aggressive disease. Also we already knew that human orthologs from secreted proteins affected by the P10 knockout and mice are equally detectable in serum from prostate cancer patients. In total we pre-qualified 48 biomarker candidates by parallel reaction monitoring mass spectrometry together with four unrelated controls. Their potential role in prostate cancer development and progression is illustrated based on hallmarks of cancer as can be seen on the right side of this slide. As next step of the verification phase A, ZARA from 78 individuals collected before undergoing prostatectomy were measured using mass spectrometry and the respective proteins were then quantified. Proteins identified in all samples with no more than one third missing values were then selected as candidates for ELISA development. This resulted in a list of 21 reproducibly detectable potential biomarker candidates indicated in green in the violin plot. The list of proteins was subjected to machine learning using a random forest classifier algorithm for dedicated feature selection by predicting risk groups. Random forest classification is particularly well suited in this context as this classification approach does not assume that the data are linearly separable. For further details on the classification approach please go ahead and check out our manuscript. The models derived by random forest classification repeatedly identified fibronectin and vitronectin to be among the top drivers of survival prognosis prediction. We therefore selected these two proteins for our platform change and switched to part B of MS Guide, the validation phase. For that we developed sandwich ELISAS and the corresponding monoclonal antibodies were generated by immunization of mice with a native protein. Our newly established ELISAS were tested and validated on an independent patient cohort. There we could show that the combination of the two protein signatures together with PSA alone or with PSA plus biopsyglesin score significantly outperforms the state of the art measures for prostate cancer aggressiveness. The combination of all parameters yielded an area under the curve of 0.66. This means that our derived protein signature together with PSA stratifies patients with localized prostate cancer 10% better than current gold standards of PCA diagnostics. So in summary we could show that the mass spectrometry driven two-step screening approach can be successfully applied to develop and translate new biomarker panels. Using MS Guide we derived a new prognostic protein signature for localized prostate cancer. This signature may be helpful in the future in the preoperative setting to stratify between men with indolent and lethal disease and lead to the identification of men with lethal disease who eventually require more intense treatment. The MS Guide strategy is generally applicable also in the context of other disease settings. In the last decade it became apparent that in the context of precision diagnostics there is the need for better and more reliable biomarkers to provide actionable information to guide treatment decisions. Each patient's individual molecular makeup should be the basis for guiding such medical decisions. The development of patient tailored treatment regimes requires the unbiased broad digitization of clinical specimen using various technologies. This is what we are currently pursuing further within SMOC, the Swiss Multiaumic Centre. So in case you are interested in what we are doing and offering there please check out our webpage. With that I am at the end of my short in silico talk and of course I would like to acknowledge the people that contributed to this work specifically Peter Schüffler who is responsible for the modeling part and also proteomics and Ralf Schiers as our industrial implementation partner as well as the CTI for the majority of our funding. Thank you for your interest and for listening in.


Is everybody coming off of work? I see everyone in there like scrubs and, oh, okay. Right, so we are live on YouTube right now. So welcome back to my channel, you guys. I'm really excited to do this. Meet and greet with you guys. There are several of the consultants that are on with me right now. I will have them introduce themselves to you shortly and then we can get this thing rolling and we'll allow for a little bit of time to allow the other students that are ready to watch. So maybe start at around seven, 10, okay? Sorry, all right. Welcome, Marge, how are you? I think you're still muted if you're saying hello, Marge, but in this session, I don't know if, Marge, you were one of the people that applied to be a part of the CASPA scholarship giveaway, but just remember we are doing that giveaway towards the end of this Zoom session where you're meeting the team. So if you haven't already gone and left a comment on the channel saying why you want to be a PA to enter into Win, go do that now so that you can be entered into Win, one of the scholarships that we're giving away today. And for those of you that are watching me on YouTube, watching us on YouTube, again, if you want to be a part of the CASPA scholarship giveaway, like there is still time because we're gonna be naming that, it's kind of like a random little picker that I have that I'll be naming towards the end of this. So go comment. All right, so I think we should start in like the same way that we started before you all, kind of the same, I guess you could say, I don't even know the order of events that we started before with Raven, you introducing yourself first. If you can just give everyone that's watching a little bit of background about who you are, what area you're actually practicing in right now and how long you've been a PA and then what are the services that you're offering for a Get That See University so that they can know like when they can book you or book a session with you. Okay, hi everyone. I'm really honored to be here. My name is Raven Matthews. I am a PA in Roanoke, Virginia. I am originally from Maryland. I went to the University of Maryland where I got my degree in public health and global poverty. I went straight from undergrad to PA school and I went to PA school at Jefferson University of Health Sciences in Roanoke, Virginia, which is now Bradford University Correlian. We had a name change and I graduated from there in December. So I'm actually a new grad PA. All of my clinical hours for PA school came from, I was a tech in an emergency room in Maryland. I currently work in urgent care. I work for, it's a large hospital company that kind of has smaller urgent care scattered throughout. And so I do a lot of urgent care medicine, but we also do a lot of primary care medicine and some emergency medicine because some of the urgent cares are in remote locations so people don't quite have access to primary care or to an emergency room. And I'm offering consultation services as well as the virtual shattering program that will be starting in a little bit. And I'm also open to any questions anybody has. I guess the kind of experience that I offer is I went straight from high school to undergrad to PA school. So I know a lot of people who are interested in going straight from undergrad to PA school. If you have any questions about that or how I got my hours while still in school, I am always open to answer questions. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for being a part. And I mean, I think that's amazing. I didn't realize that was part of your story that you just kind of went all the way through everything. So kudos to you on that. There are a lot of people that really want to know exactly how to go about doing that. So I think that you are absolutely a resource for them to tap into. Okay, next we're gonna have Van introduce himself and talk about like how long he's been a PA and just give you a little bit of background about him as well. Hey guys, it's a pleasure to be in here. My name is Van, just like the shoe. I've been a PA for six years now. A little bit of background. I did my undergrad at Howard University, HU, you know. I also finished my PA physician assistant study at Howard University as well. So I graduate in class of 2014, been a PA for the past six years, specialized in orthopedic, branching out into occupational medicine as well as urgent care. What can I can bring to the team for? I've been working with a lot of the students pretty much as soon as I started practicing, but lately I've been working more student closely to get them into PA school. Sorry, do you have a comment? You should be able to be good now. I just muted her. Go ahead, Van. Gotcha. I had, well, it's a little quick background. I've always been working with students. I just have one that just graduated from PA school recently. So it's something I always enjoyed helping other students kind of progress through their career or just going after what they want. I currently have two other students that are progressing to the second year of their matriculation in the PA program. I just work with a student that straight up to college to finish her undergrad and I just help work with her application as well as her interview. And then she got into one of the PA programs she will be starting, I believe this August. So I can offer that consultation. I can also do a lot of virtual shattering that I started doing since COVID, since I know it can be difficult for you guys to get shattering hours. But yeah, it really utilized me as a resource. I'm happy to be part of the team. And I'm really open to be helping you guys out. Hello, my name is Jamika. I am a PA and I've been practicing for about six years now. I graduated from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 2015. And then I did my undergraduate studies at Chicago State University, graduated with a degree in general biology. Right out of PA school, I started working in emergency medicine. I did that for about three years and then knew I wanted to pursue dermatology. It is difficult getting into dermatology. So in the meantime of trying to hustle and get my foot in the door, I worked in urgent care, nephrology and occupational medicine. But for the past two and a half, three years, I've been working in dermatology here at Howard University at the College of Medicine. So I am currently an advisor on the admissions committee. So I do interviews for my alma mater PA program. I was also on the admissions committee as a student there. So I was helping incoming students, meeting with them, answering questions. I'm mentoring three students right now. Well, one is a new graduate. One individual is applying to PA school and then I currently have two students. So I definitely enjoy mentoring, just kind of helping aspiring PAs navigate through all of the roadblocks and uncertainties that you can face. So essentially I'll be doing consulting for interview prep and personal statement review. So happy to help in any way and answer any questions. If I don't know, I will look it up or pass it on to someone who does. That's an extremely great motto. Definitely looking up or pass it on, don't fake it. So I think that that's great. I know a lot of students, they're gonna be extremely happy to do sessions with you because you're on an admissions committee. So that is the benefit that you guys, if you want to know about going straight from PA school, straight from high school to PA school, Raven's got you. If you wanna know about orthopedics and how to kind of get into that field, Ben has got you set there and Jamaica is already on the board, the admissions committee. So that's something that you guys should absolutely tap into. All right, we have Andre next. He is also an orthopedic PA. So he's gonna introduce himself. Hello everyone, nice to meet you guys. I'm Andre Daley, PA in orthopedic surgery. I've been doing that for almost two years. Just a quick background about myself. So I went to undergrad at USF in Tampa, Florida. After that, I actually took the scenic route to PA school. So if you have any questions on that, I can definitely help you navigate the waters. I actually obtained my blood bank degree, went to Duke University for a year and a half, worked as a medical technologist. And that has actually really helped in surgery for me as a PA at this point. And then I went to PA school in New York, LIU. And I came back to Florida to start practicing as a orthopedic surgery PA. I currently work in clinic and in surgery. So my schedule is a little hectic, but I definitely love mentoring students. I currently have, I would say over five students that shadow in me right now. I go back and forth each week. And I do, you know, offer all of them the service of reviewing their personal statement, giving them advice and giving them honest advice about what to do, some of the struggles that I have come across and hopefully not made the same mistakes I made. So I'm very honest with things and I offer the consultation and the virtual shadow and also a personal statement review. So if there's anything that you guys need, please use me as a resource. I'm gonna be very honest because people have been honest with me and that's what's helped so far. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So I appreciate again each and every one of you just taking some time out of your busy schedules. As you can see, you guys, they're all in their scrubs. Like I'm in my t-shirt over here. I'm post call though, so I was at work as well, but they're in their scrubs because they're now coming from work and they really want to be a resource to you all. So please tap into these resources. You have people that are willing to help you and offer their services and their time to you. So I think that that is a benefit that we should actually take advantage of. There are some questions that some students have posted on YouTube. And if you have a question, if you're in the actual Zoom session with us right now, you can always just kind of raise your hand and meet yourself and ask your question, okay? I'm gonna go to the YouTube chat to just pull some of these questions. And any one of you can take the opportunity to answer this question for the students. Okay, so one of them said, this is Eric Lewis. He said, just finished school and associates in radiology, radiologic technology. And you really are an only inspiration on why I'm working towards a piece. Really stressed out about my registry test in 29 days, but okay, so that's not, he's just really stressed. Eric is really stressed, trying to get into PA school. As many of us are stressed trying to get into PA school. I guess one of the questions that we can answer for students is how to manage that stress or what to think it was for everyone. Yeah, it's just, but I guess I would say as far as managing, oh, is she trying? Oh, there we go. Okay, sorry. So go ahead, Jamaica. So next question, as far as managing stress while applying for PA school, is that correct why he's applying for PA school? That was the question. Yes, that is correct. So first and foremost, it's important to do your research first. Know which schools you want to apply to, create some type of list or a spreadsheet or something, and really be intentional about finding out about the prerequisites, any type of secondary applications, required shadowing or clinical experience. And don't be afraid to call the programs if you have specific questions and you're unsure of whether your current prerequisites or whatever clinical or educational experience you have meets their requirements. The second thing I would say is get a mentor so that they can help you navigate just kind of those murky waters and provide some reassurance and encouragement when you're feeling discouraged or overwhelmed. And to that point, try and find, with social media, it's different. Like, there was no Instagram per se when I was applying, but now you can find another student, a pre-PA student out there who you can partner with and really have them to ask questions as well. And just find things that you enjoy. The same advice I would give someone who's in PA school and trying to manage the stress, it's like you have to find avenues that help with stress release. So whether that's working out, visiting friends or reading or whatever it is, use those outlets to give yourself a break. I think that that was actually key. Research for me is one of the things that I always tell people to do. I think that was one of the mistakes that I made. I was coming into this thinking like, oh, I can just get into PA school. I didn't really go into all of the various different pages of each program to look at if there's something that's different on one page versus another, or if there's a caveat to some of the things that they were requiring. So to avoid making big mistakes because they're big mistakes because you're putting your money into it. So I think anything that you're spending money for it really should be a benefit to you. So to avoid making those mistakes with respect to applying to schools that you don't necessarily meet the requirements for, I think it would be important to absolutely do your research. So that was a really good point. There is another question Cassandra said, hey everyone, I have a BS in psychology in 2019 but currently taking the last bit of prereqs, organic chemistry, bio two and genetics. Does lab assisting count as patient care experience? And this is a big question, not specifically about lab assisting but about what counts towards patient care experience. So anyone can take this and we can clean it up, I guess, at the end to talk about where you can also go to just make sure that your experience falls in that patient care experience category. I can offer some insights on this one. So from my own personal research, usually there's two types of experience. You can get this healthcare experience and then this patient care experience. The difference are healthcare experience, basically you work in any related medical related profession, but your job doesn't actually affect the, that you don't have direct interaction with the patient. Your job doesn't, your action doesn't necessarily affects the outcome of the patient's care, such as let's say you a pharmacist tech, right? Or do something along that line. So that falls under HSEs or healthcare experience or you're shadowing, it's actually considered a fall under ACEs experience whereas patient care experience where you work as a medical assistant, your performing duty that actually directly impacts the outcome of the patient's care. So to help answer your question, it depends on what you do on the lab. If you can elaborate more on that then maybe that can help you answer your question. And I like what you said at the end, Van, about elaborating more. I think that we don't as pre-PA students trying to get into PA school, we don't take the opportunity enough to actually go in and when we're talking about the descriptions of these various different experiences in CAS, we don't really elaborate so that when the schools are looking at it, they can actually see, okay, this is what she did. Because there are some schools and there are some types of like CNAs where you're not doing as much as another CNA, right? And so for me, I think that that was one of the strengths that I had because I was in with kind of like a group that allowed me to do a little bit more. And so because of that, I was able to elaborate and the schools were able to see, okay, so it's not like every other CNA that I may have seen, like she got to do XYZ and that was a benefit. So I think that it's important to make sure that we do elaborate on exactly what are responsibilities in each of those patient care experiences are. Another thing I wanted to talk about with respect to patient care experience, you can always go to CASPA's frequently asked questions and they have a list of some of the things that they consider patient care experience. So if you're still trying to figure out, okay, should I be a PCT or a physical therapy tech or a CNA or a GNA or emergency med tech, what's gonna actually count? That is one of your go-to points to actually know, have something tangible that will actually be considered patient care experience. So when in doubt, go directly to the source, you call the school as Jamika said, don't be afraid to do that, but you can always go to CASPA as well. Okay, there was a question. It said, when is the best time to take the GRE? This is from Nardine.  So this is from Nardine. She said, when was the best time to take the GRE? I can touch on this a little bit. I think it, I mean, I know this is kind of a cop out answer, but it's really person dependent. I personally scheduled my GRE far and out, far out enough. So if I needed to take it again, I could and have all of the resulting things to send to my programs when I applied. I think, you know, when you send in your application, you want a complete application and I ended up only needing to take the GRE once, but I know a couple of people who ended up taking it again just to kind of boost their scores a little bit. And so I would recommend just planning it out so you have enough time to take it again. And I know for me, the GRE is kind of expensive. So it was one of those things like making sure that I was budgeting and had the money to pay for it and then potentially pay for it again and spacing out far enough so I would have money to pay for the CASPA application. So I think it's really just personal and how much prep time you want in between them because I would rather take the GRE once and prep a whole, whole lot than take it twice and kind of not really prep at all. Yeah, I like that. I mean, and I always say that as well. For me, I tell everybody like, you know, really kind of schedule it around when you're trying to apply. So give yourself enough time. If you don't get the score that you want, you give yourself enough time to actually retake it. So I absolutely feel like it's patient-dependent. I just wanted you guys to like, we all gonna step away from asking questions really quickly because one of the other consultants came into the room. So I just want Natalie to introduce herself kind of just where she's at in this whole PA scope and then the services that she offers. And then we can get back into some of these questions that you all have been asking in the various different chats if you're available to do that, Natalie, because I know you're now coming off of a rotation. Yes. Hello, hi everybody. My name is Natalie Crump. I'm a second year, I'm a third year PA student. I will graduate in November. And so I offer personal consultations. If you just want one-on-one, I'm also a non-traditional student.  And so if you have any questions about navigating this whole process in that regard, I'm available. Also just managing your life in PA school for any person, for any reason, I'm available for that also. Yeah, that's pretty much about it. My experience prior to PA school is pretty varied. Immediately before PA school, I was a researcher for the University of Colorado and I preserved fertility for cancer patients before their treatments began. I consulted patients.  I'm sorry. I'm just gonna hold her. This is my new addition. Sorry, you all. So I basically preserved fertility for both adults and then kids. So I ran the research protocols for to stick their inner variant tissue. And then years prior to that, I worked as a CNA at a level one trauma center. And so I rotated and was a full CNA. So got lots of inpatient experience in that way and then worked for a health insurance company for a small extent. So lots of experience, super varied. Like someone has the question about master's degree. I did have that prior to PA school. Yes, I did have to take the GRE again. So that's that. It's a pleasure to meet you all. I'm excited that you all are part of this GTCU family. So that's it. All right. Thank you so much for answering that question. I mean, cause I didn't have a master's. So I didn't know how to answer that one. So that was beneficial. There was somebody who asked another kind of almost adjunctive question with respect to the master's on YouTube. So I'm gonna go to Stojana. She said, good evening. I have an associate's degree, bachelor's degree and master's degree. My master's isn't in medical slash sciences. So a lot of my prerequisites have expired. Should I consider retaking all of the prerequisites? I can answer that one. If your prerequisites have expired and the school is required, then yes. Let me turn this way. That's better lighting. Okay. If your prerequisites have expired and the school is required, then I suggest calling the schools and finding out which ones are mandatory because I know it's a lot of money to retake all of your prerequisites a lot of time. I applied to the school that I did because they didn't have an expiration date on prerequisites. So that's something to consider in terms of the money, both ways, both in an application cycle in addition to what you're gonna pay for tuition for those courses. Great. Okay. There is another question. This is from YouTube as well. Let me see. I just had it in my sights and I lost it. Sorry, you guys. She said that she just graduated from, with, okay, there it is, that girl Wanda. I just graduated college two days ago. Congratulations with my bachelor's of science. I'm currently in a nursing program, but my problem is my GPA is low. What should I do? Which is like the question on everybody's mind. What do they do if they have a low GPA and they're trying to get into PA school? So anybody can take this. I've exhausted this topic myself, but anybody, if you have any insight on it, you can address what to do if you have a low GPA, but you're trying to get into PA school. Here's my two cents. One question is how low? Like what is a low GPA? Because there may still be PA programs out there where that GPA is not a disqualifier. Secondly, I would consider post-grad classes. Taking a few courses that can one demonstrate that you can handle science courses at a graduate level and you can do well in those courses. So if you do say post-grad courses, you definitely need to achieve a B or higher. So yeah, that's my two cents. One, your GPA is not necessarily a disqualifier and if it actually is for the program or programs that you really want to apply to, it may be worth taking some science courses to just show these programs that you actually can handle and succeed in tougher science courses. So I don't mean to put you on the spot, but since you are our resident admissions counselor and on the admissions staff, I would like to know from your standpoint, as somebody that's looking at your helping students and you're also kind of mentoring them, but then you're also doing interviews, what do you look at? Do you look at the student holistically or like what are kind of like the main things that you take into consideration when thinking about should this student be admitted to the program or are they a right fit for the program? Yeah, absolutely. So within my program, we definitely look at the applicant holistically where I can admittedly state that there's emphasis on the GPA, the GRE, and your letter's a recommendation. So we really focus on honestly this past year, I don't think we accepted a patient, accepted a candidate with less than a 3.3. And so it's different across the board with programs, but for sure we want to see that and also how you're taking your courses as well. Like if you have biochemistry and then you have yoga and then you have like some other random courses, like we want to see that you can take biochem, you can take organic chem, you can take biology all at the same time and do well because when you're in PA school, you are taking all of these very difficult courses in addition to like clinicals. So you really want to show that you can handle the rigor of the program. Hey, I like it, I like it. I didn't even really think about the aspect of making sure that you're kind of taking all these classes at the same time, just because I'd already done a bachelor's in a natural science degree. So that was a given, but I could absolutely see how that would be important for PA school. So definitely a tip that you guys should remember, especially if you're taking courses, kind of you're cherry picking them at various different community colleges. You bring up a good point Adana because I was also a science major. So I was taking my science classes, but like I've interviewed music majors or psychology majors or business, you know, majors. So they aren't taking those that heavy science load like that. To kind of piggyback off of what you're saying, I would also kind of use the opportunity to post back classes and things like that to really tweak your studying habits, figure out what kind of caused your GPA to drop and kind of refine how you take tests and things like that. Because I will say after being in PA school, I realized that, you know, their GPA requirements and like class requirements are not them just like being mean and trying to weed out people, but most programs you have to maintain a GPA to stay in the program. So like getting in is like only the first step. And I know like for my program specifically, if you failed a test, you were allowed to remediate it, but there was a cap on how many times you could do that and your grades, your cumulative GPA had to stay over a certain amount. And then also your grade at each class had to stay in like the B range. So I would use that time to kind of figure out what you can do because when you get into PA school, it is like taking all of those classes in fast drive. Like you don't really have time to relearn how to study and I think that was something that was really hard for me. I had to learn how to study again, how to study more efficiently just so that I could keep up and keep the grades. That's kind of would be my little tip to do while you're trying to get your GPA up. So I hear a lot of people talking about post back and there is a question on here about post back. So on the YouTube chat, it says, when you mentioned post back courses, do you mean other upper division science courses that are not prerequisites? So what exactly is a post back program and what do you all mean when you mentioned try doing a post back? So there are some universities that have a post back program. So they have after you get your undergraduate degree, you can do a post back program. If there's a school that you want to attend and they don't have a post back program, you can kind of piece together courses and they are like you said, graduate and higher level courses. Ideally they are the prerequisites to the school that you're applying to and meeting the science courses but that's essentially what it is. So they're just science or prerequisite courses that you can take together, not necessarily obtaining a degree but there are universities that have a post back program as well. All right. There's a question from the S word. She asked, for those that took the standard route, how did you all go about obtaining funding for PA school? So I think, Andre, this is up your. The funding, it's almost for me. Honestly, it's one of the things I struggle with on a daily basis when I look back and I went to a school in New York. So one New York is really expensive. So my advice will be obviously for East school, look at living expenses.  Are you going out of the States? So there's a lot of factors that you have to consider.   I think in due time, you'll be able to pay it off and you'll still have a comfortable life. So just to answer that question, I think the schools will definitely offer student loans to students. I didn't have to take out any private loan or anything like that. Everything was true, federal, government. And I think you'll be okay. I wouldn't stress too much about the funding. The main thing is just to get in. Does anyone else have any insight on how to get funding for PA school? Natalie has something to say. So you can also apply for the National Health Service Corps Scholarship. They offer, for right now, PA's are still included where you can get basically a scholarship to attend PA school. They'll pay in full in return for your service at like a federally qualified health center or some high need medical practice or office. They also offer loan repayments. If you don't get the scholarship, you can apply as a practice in PA for the loan repayment if you happen to work in one of those facilities as well. A lot of state governments and organizations have something similar as well. And then the other part is you can also always do loans.  But to be completely honest, student debt is not looked at. I am so sorry. She's parking at a moving cop. I'm so sorry. Student debt is not looked at the same as like credit card debt or other things like that. They understand that you went to school. And then when you're out, there are tons of options to consolidate or make your loan payments, something bearable while you are trying to live as well. So there are options. Yeah, there are. And so for me, I didn't qualify for any of those things because I was an international student essentially. And so that was the loan aspect. Like there was no, I didn't have good credit. Thank God I have it now. But that was only because of PA school. But I literally, I exhausted every single resource that I could think of. I went searching for scholarships. I like just Googled scholarships for healthcare or PA school or anything. I knocked on doors to friends and families and I was like, Hey, can you like co-sign alone with me? And none of that really panned out. Like God kind of worked some other things out for me, but you really just have to kind of exhaust every resource. If you really want to get into PA school, like don't allow the money to be a barrier to you getting into the program, especially if you were accepted. And that was one thing that was important for me because I was accepted into PA school, but I didn't know how I was going to pay for it. And I honestly, even up until my first and second semester, I didn't know how I was paying for PA school, but it just happened to work out. So there will be a way made out, but you kind of just have to do that legwork. And I don't want any of us to be afraid of working hard for what you want. A lot of students that we counsel, and I can speak specifically for myself, some of them are looking for an easy route to PA school, but I want you guys to not be afraid of working hard to get to this point, okay? So exhaust all your resources, the S word, figure out something, but there are lots of options and the loan will always be there. So you can exhaust some of these other options that don't allow, you don't require you to get into debt per se. You're muted Adana. Sorry guys, so there's a question in the chat as well as on YouTube. So I'm just trying to like navigate all of them. So sorry, but it says from iPhone, it says on CASPA and the transcript matching section, it asks me to add biological science courses and behavioral science courses. How do I know which of my courses I've taken classify as each? Does anyone want to answer this? So if not, I can, okay Natalie, Natalie's got it. You're big, cause I was a psych major. So I had a lot of behavioral science courses and your behavioral science courses are gonna be like I think more like that. So you've had like a biological basis of behavior kind of course that was more like a science bend but really regarding sort of like psychological processes that would be more like a behavioral science class versus like a cell biology, which is a true science course. So just sort of look at your transcript in that regard and see another telltale sign is which department offered that course? Was it through psych? Was it through sociology? Was it through science like a chemistry department or a bio department? And that'll help delineate also. Agreed, like she said, most of the behavioral science is really in your psychology and social like sociology those courses will go towards your behavioral sciences. And then again, don't be afraid to use that phone and call. So you can always call CASPA. Like me and CASPA, like we were best friends. I would call these people on a consistent basis just to make sure like, all right, is this gonna be considered a science versus a non-science? How are you getting? Because calculating CASPA GPA is key, okay? And so understanding where you land in that CASPA calculated GPA is important. So I wanted to make sure that all of the courses that I was taking was placed in the direct like the exact place that they needed to to make sure that my GPA was hitting the right spot. So don't be afraid to use that number and call CASPA to ask them, would this be considered a biological science or behavioral science? I don't know if you guys see any other questions in the Zoom chat. I'm gonna just head over to the YouTube chat because I saw some things. This is from Jalen Crockett. Are they right? I just graduated with my bachelor's of science degree recently and this, or maybe it's biological sciences theory recently and this will be my second time applying to PhD school. I've worked as an MA in various specialties over the years, most recently in dermatology. My direct patient care hours are in the 4,000, 5,000 range kudos to you because that is a lot. My GPA is average with an upward trend and I just started a master's of science in medical sciences degree. Any advice on how I should approach this cycle as a re-applicant? So anyone can take that or I can answer it as well. How are these people, they like, I was that person. I did all of those things. I applied to PhD school twice also and similar background I had like, I mean way over like 4, 5,000 hours just because of my track but what I did change from cycle one to cycle two was my personal statement. And I think because, and I have to, I guess I would probably need to ask you and maybe this is something to work out later but like what you changed from cycle one to cycle two besides starting the master's program, if that's the only thing that you change, you can speak to it but I think a lot of times and times is how you present yourself and your personal statement that can make the difference. It's like really showcasing who you are and more so showing in your illustration instead of telling like through examples and such but that's how I would approach the cycle. I also call the schools I apply to and just was like, hey, here are my stats. Here's what I'm considering. Do you think it's worth reapplying? Like, is there any tools and tips you would give? And I have one school who was super awesome. She was like, I would change this at my third and she was the reason I applied a second time because I was gonna be like, forget this. I'll just get a PhD in psychology and call today. But that person at that school was the reason why I actually decided to reapply. So call the schools if they're open to it and just ask them if they have any recommendations. A lot of times they might give you like very generic responses but you might look up and get a school who took the time like they did for me and actually sort of walked through and gave some really good advice but for sure the personal statement is something you can tweak in addition to now showcasing this additional degree that you're gonna get. I definitely agree with that one. The personal statement is key. Like if you're considering, if you have two applicants, the exact same scores, they look good on paper. The personal statement is what's gonna separate you to get that seat. So I definitely pay really good attention to, grammar to not giving too much information and just having something solid that makes them want more. They want to get to know you as a person. Your personal statement should tell a story. It should not bore the person who was reading it. It should really want them to see who is this person that is on paper. I really wanna get them here for an interview. Yeah, I would agree with Andre and Natalie. I was a re-applicant as well and my personal statement is where I chose to focus on just kind of representing myself. I definitely highlighted some things that I had done in between the two cycles. So I think that's important. Like if you had a solid application but you just didn't get selected for an interview, it's not the time to start doubting yourself. Just that you may have to apply again. It doesn't mean that you're not qualified or that you're not meant to get into PA school. So I would definitely say, just don't give up. And I was on the phone with the academic advisor for the program that I eventually got accepted to on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. And she really helps walk me through the process. And I was certain about what I was doing because I was able to have all those questions answered. So I feel like we are all saying the same things. Like do not be afraid to call the programs that you're interested in with your stats, with your questions and really, really focus on having someone edit your personal statement. That your personal statement should take you, you know, a few weeks a month or so to write and should be edited at least three or four times. I wholeheartedly agree with everything that everyone has said. I think it is important for all of us to make those changes and I didn't get into PA school until I changed my personal statement. And if you've seen that video, like my personal statement, the original one was a hot mess. So I understood why I didn't get in those first two times because my GPA, it changed, but it didn't change significantly enough to warrant like not getting an interview to, you know, getting an interview and in acceptances. So I think that that is absolutely important to be mindful of and just understanding, as Andre said, like what to highlight in that personal statement. And I think Natalie mentioned that as well because you have a lot of experience and that means you kind of have a lot to talk about, but knowing what specifically is important to highlight to really get them to know who Jalen is as a person, I think is really important. Jalen said thank you for the feedback. So really quickly, I know we were on here for, I said we were gonna be on here for an hour and I don't wanna really go past that. I wanna be respectful of everyone's time, but I just wanted to talk briefly about the virtual shadowing program and then we'll answer a couple more questions in the chat. So we are doing a virtual shadowing program and specifically it will be a six-week program. You will get one-on-one conversations with one of the PAs that you see here. Jamaica is not doing virtual shadowing at the moment and I don't believe Natalie is doing virtual shadowing at the moment as well, so she's still a student, but you will be able to talk to the PA and ultimately kind of get some of the same information that you have that you're asking right now. You'll be able to ask them those questions because those sessions will be an hour for six weeks. There will be various different tasks that you have to complete. At the end of it all, you will get a certificate and we do have programs that are on board with accepting our virtual shadowing program towards their virtual shadowing hours. The virtual shadowing program will count towards 18 hours. We're still actively searching out schools. So, you know, as I get schools on board, I'll update, I'll start updating a list and then we'll be able to post that for you all. But I think it's something that you should absolutely take kind of advantage of. We'll be kind of promoting it throughout the course of these next couple of weeks and plan on launching it at the end of June. So it will be a six-week program, as I said, with various different tasks and one-on-one contact with a certified physician assistant. You'll also, you know, at the end of it, we'll likely be able to get a letter of recommendation out of it because you would have cultivated a relationship. So those are all things to keep in mind, but I just wanted to touch on that because I know I've had the question asked, like, how does GTCU do virtual shadowing or how would you help with virtual shadowing and letters of recommendations? Well, this is one of the ways that we've been like diligently working at developing. And so that is what we'll be launching at the end of this upcoming month in June. And then we're gonna ask a couple more questions and then we're gonna talk about who the winners are because we are giving away two CAS with scholarships to pay for your initial CAS application, which I believe is about $175, and then your second school that you wanna apply to. So stay tuned for that, okay? Ward T asks, can anyone speak more on a strong personal statement? And I think like we can exhaust like what a strong personal statement looks like, but if anyone has some really quick tips and tricks on how to make your personal statement strong or what a strong personal statement looks like to you, if you can address that for Ward, I think they would appreciate it. So I can address it as well. So for me, I know when I'm looking at individuals' personal statements when I'm doing my personal statement reviews, I always like to see something different than what I can see on your application through CASVA. So I don't want all of your stats.  I don't want to see all of that because those are things that I can get from your CASVA application. So I want to get an insight on who you are as a person because looking at you on a sheet of paper as just numbers and words isn't beneficial to me to understand how you would fit with the cohort that we're trying to build. So I think that it's important when you're trying to figure out what to write in your personal statement, initially draw the reader in because think about it if you can imagine as an admissions counselor or somebody that's part of the admissions committee, you're reading hundreds of personal statements, you know, because there are thousands of applications that are coming in and you're trying to riddle these thousands down to hundreds and then down to like 30, 40 seats. So you're reading lots of personal statements and if you're coming to me with like a five page personal statement, which you really can't because you have 5,000 characters to enter into CASVA, but if your statement was five pages and you entered it in and you didn't realize that there was a cap on how many characters you had, your personal statement is incomplete. So I think it's important to really understand the nuances of what is important to add in the personal statement, what will give them a fairly holistic picture of who you are as not only a student but future student and as a person and then what you can bring to the table. I think that is important. What can you bring as a future student to their program, to the cohort and ultimately to the PA profession? So that I would list as strong points to add into your personal statement. Yeah, and I'll just, I agree with you Adana and I'll just add that the goal of the personal statement is to tell your story. How did your experiences lead you to choosing to pursue a career as a physician assistant and how have those experiences, how do you feel that those experiences have prepared you to be successful and a good fit for the programs that you are applying to? And the challenge is finding a unique and eloquent way of writing that and stating that while still using your own voice. And so I'll say even when I, when we kind of review personal statements on the admissions committee, the things that we really gravitate towards are applicants who have overcome adversity who have a clear declaration on why they want to be a PA as opposed to any of the other medical specialties and maturity. So how do we know that you're ready to step into a role that holds such a large responsibility? And so those are just some things that you want to pay attention to and try to highlight within your personal statement. I would say too, something that's helpful is to, if you're still gathering patient care experience keep a journal of experiences that really moved you or those things that securing or solidifying your decision to be a PA and then you can somehow incorporate that experience or reflect back on it when you're writing. I agree with you, Natalie. One of the things I noticed with a lot of personal statements that attracts me is when people are being honest and emotional, it's one thing to be vulnerable get the point that you're trying to say across in a nice one page essay and really string on the heart strings per se on the patient, the person who's rereading it. I think a lot of people get shy with their responsibilities and they're like, oh, well, I get it in a surgery center and it doesn't matter. It's like, you just acknowledge what you do, what you've done in the past and just make that experience the best experience they've ever heard about. And then I'll say, one final thought for me is show me, don't tell me.  Like, well, tell me a story about a time when you persevered or tell me, describe for me a situation where you had to be compassionate and then I'll see what that looks like for you instead of you saying, using those adjectives, show me. That was all really good stuff, you guys. So thank you again so much for answering that. I will do one more question from the chat. So this is from Jessica Mendoza. She said, I'm a person that loves to have a plan I know that it's not always possible, but could you give me a number of direct patient care hours or healthcare hours, shadowing, volunteering hours that she should essentially kind of strive to? I would say as much as you can before you can apply. There's no set limit. I don't think there ever can be too much or too many. And the more you have, the more experiences you'll have to talk about. And I do think that people who had like a lot of patient care experiences in my PA class in general had had an easier time actually in PA school. So when I was doing like my shadowing or healthcare hours and things, I wasn't really thinking of it as like, I just need to check this off. But it was what skills am I getting here that I would be able to use as a PA or looking at the PAs and seeing what they're doing and then also use those experiences to network. You're with other healthcare providers, use that experience to talk to them, get letters from, see what they liked about the profession, what schools they went to, things like that. I also am a big planner and I like, I'm kind of that person where I want set numbers, I want set deadlines and like, I just think for that specific one, there isn't any.  And it just looks, it looks good that you're still pursuing to get more hours. So I would just say do as many as you can before applying or even once you do apply. Okay, all right. Thank you guys again so much for answering all of those questions. I think everybody got some really good information. So I just wanna name the two people that won those scholarships. You're gonna have to respond back to me. I will verify everything. So don't respond with some email that is not attached to your YouTube account because that will not, you're not gonna get the scholarship. I'm sorry to say, okay. But the two winners, this is from the, we're supposed to comment in the video to see if you won. So the first winner is Dorinda Sam. Dorinda Sam, she commented on the video about a day ago.  So go ahead and send me an email at a down in the PA and I will get the scholarship to you. So please do that. And the next winner is Demi Mendes. Demi Mendes. So Demi and Dorinda, two D's. Can you, if you guys have seen this live or you come back and see it, I'm gonna write your name in the chat as well. Dorinda Sam are the winners. And I will put this up on Instagram also just so that you know, please contact me at a down in the PA. And you guys, we are gonna be doing not necessarily these live Zoom sessions with everybody, but specifically we're gonna be doing these scholarships because we know that it is, it costs money and it's a little expensive to get into PA school and to apply to CASA. So we're gonna be doing this on a monthly basis. So be sure to continue to tune into all of our various different social medias and YouTube so that you know when the next winner will be, the next giveaway will be happening, okay? If you guys can briefly just kind of shout out or write your, tell them your social media handles where they can see more of your content and reach out to you. Of course you can see them on Get That See University but I wanna make sure that they get their shine as well. So please go ahead and do that. Hi, I am at the Black Durham PA on Instagram and that's where you can find me, DM me, ask me questions. I have some content on my platform about dermatology and skin of color. So if you have anything specific that you want to ask me about dermatology, I'm happy to answer as well as just about pursuing the PA profession. Awesome and then you can find me at the PA Life Coach. Also if you have any questions about surgery, orthopedics or anything like that, just please let me know. My platform is strictly to help students to get into PA school and even just PA's just to navigate life. So please let me know. Hi, my Instagram handle is underscorenathalie.marie underscore and shamed enough I'm not on there consistently but you can definitely go on there. I always have something about what my rotations are like and just like in general in terms of balancing. My page is really motivation and positivity. So if you guys wanna reach out and ask about like what it is being in PA school and also being a part of AAPA. So I serve as a student delegate to AAPA and I'm also running right now for president elect. So we'll see how that goes. But yeah, you guys can reach me there. Sorry, I'm like choking on tea. But excuse me. My Instagram handle is at ravenmonnaie. I am still choking. I'm sorry. I'm currently planning a wedding and I have a cute dog. So my account isn't all PA stuff, but there will be there is PA stuff thrown in there. And my DMs are always open for questions. And I just started my job as an urgent care PA. So I kind of plan on updating more about what it's like to be an urgent care PA kind of in this environment where people don't really have great access to healthcare. And I was also a public health major. So just kind of expect, you know, wedding planning dogs but then also PA stuff. So like I said, DM me if you have any questions. Well, thank you. I'm sure they'll be happy to see your cute dog and all of your nice wedding planning stuff. Thank you guys again so much for watching us and joining us on this live. Really hope that it was beneficial for you. All of those handles are great. So please go ahead and follow them on their respective Instagrams but you can also check them out on GetThatsTheUniversity.com, okay? So head on over there and book your sessions. They are available, there are lots of session times so that you can actually choose a time that is more conducive to your schedule. So if you need to get your personal statement reviewed or you just need some help with interviews or just life help, you know, maybe you're planning a wedding as well and you have the cute dog and you wanna talk to Raven about that process. You can do that also with respect to understanding PA school. And then getting into just kind of the whole, the more, if you can say prestigious part of the PA profession in terms of serving on boards, you can talk to Natalie about that, okay? And Jamika, our resident admissions counselor. I love saying that because I think that's such a benefit. So I'm really happy that you're part of this team. So thank you guys, each and every one of you. If you guys have any other questions, you can DM us and again join GetThatsTheUniversity. And please Demi and who's Derinda? Demi and Derinda, send me an email so we can get you guys going for your CASFA application scholarship. All right, bye guys. Okay, let me stop streaming. So I know...


Hey everyone. Today I want to talk about what I think is the future of plugins related to WASM. Plugins have been around for a very long time, since pretty much the birth of computing. And I think the best way to think about the future, instead of me sitting up here and making a bunch of bad predictions that will turn out to be wrong, we can just kind of examine some of the past. So I'm going to take you back to the year 1996. Software was sold in boxes still. My parents were taking me to see Independence Day in theaters, a big blockbuster. And the Cubase team was adding a plugin system to their digital audio workstation. If you're not familiar with this music technology, digital audio workstation, or DAW, is basically the control software for a music studio. And the plugins are basically instruments or effects that you can instantiate and connect together in different ways in the system. So in 1996, they created this plugin system. They created their first plugin called Neon. It's a little synthesizer. So let's talk about how this worked. Back then, there was a well-known, well-understood architecture for plugins. Basically, everything was a shared object. The plugins that they made were kind of designed to emulate the hardware rack modules that came before. So basically, the way it worked is that the system exposed these interfaces for chaining together audio and control signals. And the actual code itself was a shared object. So it was native code wrapped in whatever target you had. Like you have a DLL for Windows. You have a DLL for Mac, et cetera. And what glued all this together is basically C header file. And they called this interface in the standard VST. And it was their plugin standard. So yeah, so VST was not the only standard. There were lots of other DAWs out there. They were all creating plugin systems. But VST actually came to dominate the plugin market. And you might ask yourself, why? Why would these big companies like create plugin systems and standards for their DAWs and then adopt VST? Well, I think the reason is basically VST had the best plugins. And there's something interesting that happens. It's kind of like a Turing-complete crossover point where once your plugin is capable of emulating someone else's plugin system, it's kind of a race to the bottom to the best plugins. So what happened was developers, VSTs being the best, developers were able to just virtualize away the other host plugin systems. And that way, they could run VSTs everywhere. And from here, it created kind of a flywheel effect. Because now that you can run VSTs everywhere, developers are going to even build more VSTs. They're going to want to target VSTs because they have more customers. So yeah, this was an amazing time. Plugins became a whole separate market and business. The plugin developers and the users were completely divorced from the rise and fall of the market shares of the different DAWs. So much so that plugins can just completely outlive the host now. On the right here is that same neon plugin running in GarageBand today. So imagine creating something in 1996 and you're just getting like 30 years of revenue off of it. Pretty cool. So what happened? Like why did we have all these amazing plugin ecosystems? And you don't really see a lot of them today. Well, I think what happened was basically, in short, the web happened. And when we went from a desktop era to the web era, we went from client compute back to server compute. And with that, we couldn't really bring those plugin architectures of shared objects. Multitenancy is kind of a double-edged sword in this way, right? It enabled a lot of great things. But then we also lost a lot of that. And the main reason is you can't just take someone's untrusted data code and run it in your server. And if you're not really sure why that's the case, come talk to me. I can explain a little more why. But it's a very bad idea. So over the next 10 years, basically any SAS application, any web application that wanted to be extensible, did so in this kind of way of having a sort of lockdown DSLs. You can't really take plugins in. You can't really take them out. Not really calling out Salesforce here. This is kind of just the way it had to be. But we weren't able to have that same freedom that we had before. So obviously, the future, I think, is that a web assembly solves that problem where you can have multitenancy and shared objects. And that's going to enable a bunch of new SAS plugin systems. I think probably the best example that I've seen today is going to be something like Shopify Functions. You should definitely check that out. So that's kind of my first prediction. We will start to see more of these SAS plugin systems. I think if that's successful, what you're going to see next is basically consolidation of standards. So where do these companies want to or not? I think that certain verticals will have to consolidate around certain standards because we're going to have that same sort of turing, complete crossing point where once people can emulate each other's plugin systems away, the best plugins are going to win. So an example here would be, like, say, the payments industry all have a kind of similar platform. They all get together and decide, this is what our standard is for operating all these platforms. And they kind of collaborate on this. Yeah, so if you're interested in this, come talk to me. I'm a pretty friendly person. You could also go online and find our community. Ecstasy is an open source community that's building tools to enable this future. And the easiest way to do that would be to check out the GitHub repo and join our Discord. But that's it. Thank you.


Hello, everyone. This is a video write-up for the challenge SQL for 40 points in the web category and the capture the flag competition TJCTF. So the challenge prompt here is find the IP address of the admin user. The flag is TJCTF, the regular flag format wrapped around the IP address. So they give us a link here to SQL, this web page here, and we can try and log in supposedly with an email address and a password. We can try anything for the password. And the result is that this is what I got about you from the database. No such column password. So you could try the typical or one equals one comment stuff, your typical SQL injection, you may have to go through to change the email type or input type to just regular text, blah, blah, blah. But the gist of this challenge is that it's not an easy breezy, regular SQL injection like CTF problem. So I'm going to open up a terminal, get some sublime text open. I'm going to use sublime text version two so I can use build view. And let's start to actually throw stuff at this level here. Let's import requests because we're going to be doing some web stuff. Let's grab the URL, which is simply SQL, TJCTF, paste that in here.  And we can s.get URL or make that a variable here. And let's go ahead and print that out. Let's split the screen because sublime text two is handy. And let's just do that with our build output. We can set the syntax to HTML and it gives us a bunch of junk. But the only really interesting things that we want are the results of the output when we log in. So let's go ahead and just cut this up to let's say, I want to say like 70, 175 lines. Yeah. Okay. So let's just join what we will have once we try and split this by new lines. Let's go like 175 onward. So, oh boy, just at the very top. Okay. We'll get all that. And how much do we want to cut? Let's go 18, 175 plus 18. So, okay, cool. Now we should just get only that stuff. Let's go ahead and make a post request just as it would expect. We can supply data here that we want to supply. Duh. Data to supply that we want to supply. It's expecting email, which we had supplied as please sub at me.com. And it was wanting the password, right? So we can set that to anything. Let's actually just use double quotes here for consistency. Sure. Okay. And it says, this is what I got about you from the database. No such column password. So here you could, if you particularly wanted to, use your SQL injection or one equals one, etc. Try some of their comments or kinds of strings, blah, blah, blah. But I didn't get a whole lot of success with that. And actually, again, props to and shout out to Eagles Moto, who did a lot of fuzzing and actually got some traction with this. He figured out that, hmm, what if password is noted? There's no such column. What if I ask for something else? What if I got it anything like please sub? And it'll say, oh, no such column, that thing. So maybe that is our SQL injection vector, just like the second field that we're asking for. So he tried kind of at random IP address with underscores and it says, hmm, none type object is not iterable. Okay. So that looks like there is a column for that IP address, that field there, but we need to actually get results from it. So at that point, we could try IP address. And then what if we wanted our or one equals one or whatever, would we be able to do it just then equals result there? And it says, yeah, okay, cool. It got us some results. Let's de-entitize this so we can say, okay, here is the result from the database ID equals one, username equals some user here, first name, last name, blah, blah, blah, gender, male IP address here. Okay. So we want to get where username is equal to admin, right? Let's say, and username is equal to admin. Will that work for us? No such column admin. Okay. Let's remove some of those spaces there. Nothing username or we could just do where username. Oh, okay. Let's do actually and username equals admin in strings. So we will take that appropriately. Cool. We get a result here. Oh, no. Okay. Let's do use that as our aura clause or username equals admin. Now we get some responses. Sweet. We get our ID username admin there and the IP address that we want. Perfect. So if we wanted to, we could say TJCTF with that IP address wrapped in it, that will be our flag dot text. And simple as that, just some fuzzing, trying to determine where in that input is our actual vector or attack vector for some SQL injection. I did a little bit of like union selects in here. I did a union select one, two, et cetera, et cetera. I kept fuzzing this until I got a result. And then I actually was able to just, okay, now I can literally leak the entire database if I wanted to. But I just like select IP address from users where like username is equal to admin. And then I got that as a result or not. But I did use that. Let me pull up the script. This is what I ended up using select IP address from users where username equals admin. So there is a little bit of tinkering you can do because SQL injection is pretty neat. And that's just anything that you particularly want to go for. I didn't end up cutting this one up, but I did get the IP address just like that. So neat handy tricks. Once you find your attack vector for SQL injection, there's a lot of damage you can do. Very, very cool. Thank you guys for watching. Hope you're enjoying these. And I want to give a special shout out to the people that support me on YouTube and Patreon. Holy cow, I said the wrong word. It's all right, I'm a failure. $1 a month on Patreon will give you a special shout out just like this at the end of every video. $5 a month on Patreon will give you early access to everything that I released on YouTube before I released it. If you did like this video, please do like, comment, and subscribe. You're going to see more CDF videos and programming tutorials. Hey, please join our Discord server link in the description. Wow, this is cool. I've never done this that fast. Hey, thanks again, guys. Please see, I'd love to see you on Patreon and see you in the next video later.


Happy holidays, and welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Deyla Nyanagita, and we're broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we're at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and you can subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list at that site as well. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of successful business by local people. Our guests share with us their stories, their trials, their tribulations about their journey. In the ThinkTech studio today is Brian Samson, co-founder of True North and three-time startup pioneer. So, we're excited to hear about that. Brian, welcome to the ThinkTech studios today and the Business in Hawaii show. How are you? Excellent. Thank you so much for having me today. Oh, I've been looking forward to this interview for a long time. Tell us your background and how you got to Hawaii. Sure. It's a little bit of a story, which is great. So born in Chicago, and that's where I was there until my 20s. And then I started to migrate slowly to the West Coast. I was in Southern California for a couple of years, and then eventually made it up to San Francisco. And that's where the origination of this current company I'm co-founding, True North. And that led me to Argentina. And then eventually here to Hawaii. And there's probably all kinds of threads we can pull there, but that's kind of the high level. That's right.  That's right. Thank you. Homegrown in Hawaii, we're so proud of that. Thank you so much. Yeah, my wife and I are just absolutely thrilled to have a baby boy on the way. Oh, very exciting time. Someone to carry on the True North legacy, right? The True North tradition, yes, yes, absolutely. So tell me about starting up True North in Hawaii. How did that come about? How do you pick Hawaii? Yeah, so very interesting story. So we, as I mentioned, we were in San Francisco, Argentina, and Hawaii, three places that actually couldn't be more different from each other. So I had been in San Francisco for quite some time, probably about five or six years and just super immersed in the startup scene there. Worked for some really interesting companies, some that did quite well and some that really didn't do quite well. And that's really what's fun about the startup world. You're kind of making a bet on the roulette table to see which one pays off. So I was there and that's where I met my co-founder. His name is Alex. And we both worked at the same, it was actually a fintech company. Both worked at the same fintech company in San Francisco. And we started to kind of see some interesting opportunities that we wanted to poke some holes in and see if we had a real business there. So it's really a global story. We ended up trying to seek funding from somebody we also knew from that fintech company who happened to be in China. So we raised our angel round and then decided that the best place to put our sales team was going to be San Francisco. The best place to put our engineering team would be Argentina. And actually my wife, I convinced my wife to go to Argentina with me for a little while. And we established our company there or at least the major development office there. So that was really interesting anyway, you know, living abroad in a different country, getting that going. But we had a calling that was pulling us to Hawaii. So my wife was born on Guam and actually spent most of her childhood living in Asia as an expat daughter. So she lived in Seoul, South Korea, lived in Tokyo for a long time. She speaks Japanese. And her entire family just kind of one by one like Domino's started to end up in Oahu. So aunties, uncles, grandparents, parents, siblings. So as we knew we were looking to start our family and, you know, thanks, we're so blessed to have one on the way. We knew that that would eventually draw us to Oahu. And having a company like ours where a laptop and an internet connection can make a lot possible. So that brought us to Oahu about two and a half years ago. And we've been so thrilled to be here ever since and have started to really build a little bit more of a business out here too. So for those of us non-tech savvy, what is fintech? Sure. That's a great question. So fintech is a little bit of a buzzword today, right? Now fintech is what it stands for is financial technology. And that's really where True North specializes in. Now fintech, although it's getting a lot of airtime and play nowadays, it's actually been around for a little while. PayPal was kind of the first fintech company. So PayPal, as most people know, it's in the payments business. But fintech has really taken off over the last 10 years. So let me maybe start defining it a little bit and then what's really driven this revolution. So fintech in a nutshell is this next generation of software that has to do with money, right? And almost everyone on the planet has some sort of connection with money, right? Now the old-school generation, it was really about the banking industry. The banks were the place that you got your money. And there's really two things that happen. The global recession of 2008 and 2009, now thankfully Hawaii was really not very impacted by that, especially compared to the mainland. And that's some really smart decision-making by the leadership here. And that was amazing. But what happened on the mainland is a lot of distrust over these financial institutions. A lot of credibility was really lost on Wall Street and some of these other major financial centers. So that really created this environment of what if we had a new start-up that could do all these things that, especially this millennial generation, is more open to doing things online, doing their banking and payments and managing their money, their investments, getting a mortgage. They'll do all those things online instead of going to a bank branch. So you have this comfort with technology and this loss of credibility. And the third thing that's really driving this is banks were doing everything. So you would go to your bank for your mortgage, your auto loan to manage your retirement accounts, pay people, wire money, and so forth. Now one of my favorite sayings, I guess, is if you have 10 priorities, you have zero priorities. And where banks I think kind of struggled is they were trying to do 10 things. And these little pesky start-ups decided they wanted to do one thing and only one thing and do it incredibly well. So they would take payments, for example, and do payments better than anybody because they were laser focused or do mortgages and only mortgages and just do that better than anybody. So there's a real opening there. And just being in the fintech space, you can see all this venture capital just flowing. So not even counting the bigger companies that are getting into fintech like a JP Morgan or Bank of America, just the little start-up companies, in the U.S. alone, you're seeing on average about $20 billion spent as investment into fintech companies. And that's where we're typically playing is those venture funded, the next generation, the new ideas in fintech. Wow. So Hawaii, we're so proud of being ingrained in our culture and supporting our legacy businesses.  Sure. Yeah. It's very much a relationship environment. It's very relationship driven. Tell me how you started talking about moving to a higher or a more advanced technology platform, Hawaii, to a newer technology platform, knowing that we were this culture. Yeah, yeah, sure. So Hawaii is a really interesting place. So there's some great benefits to being a little more risk adverse, right? As in Hawaii really survived the Great Recession or a lot of these other urban tech centers got hit. But since I've been here for about two and a half years, I've been really inquisitive to the fintech appetite and I've been pleasantly surprised. There's some serious interest, a lot of enthusiasm. I have some colleagues that are executives at banks here and they're starting to think about blockchain and different things that they can move to really interesting, powerful platforms and applications. So I see Hawaii in this really great middle ground of not overdoing it with the risk, so they're still being a little more comfortable for your average citizen. But they're testing the waters enough and starting to push some boundaries and I think that's going to be a great intersection. Hawaii is really in a good spot. Fantastic. I know that you've been very thoughtful and very strategic about how you introduce Hawaii to this new type of technology. We see our banks changing platforms, right? Banking's completely different now, right, where now it's an experience, it's a customer experience going into our banks. But I do know that you wanted to make sure that what you brought and what True North brought to Hawaii was aligned with Hawaii's goals, our leadership goals.  I think we have that picture here. Yeah, thank you. Tell us about your meeting with Governor Ige and how that conversation sparked. Yeah, sure. It was such an honor for my wife to have a chance to meet with the Governor. That's actually at Aloha beer right here in Kakaako and we had a chance to talk about tech and the future and really some things that are coming to Hawaii. I love that he has an engineer background, so very pragmatic, like a real problem solver. I love that he was very straightforward and had some great ideas on how to tackle that, so it was such an honor to meet with him and talk more about the ideas for FinTech. Fantastic. So, Hawaii has an appetite for the old, but we also have an appetite for the new. Tell me what you think Hawaii is ready for, where we're going to go with the FinTech movement. Yeah, sure. So, when you talk to people, what drives their banking decision? And to your point earlier, it can vary a little bit by demographics and age, but would you see some of the newer generation, what drives their decision? It's actually no longer about that relationship, it's actually about convenience, so convenience isn't just having an ATM on every corner, but it's also, can I do this without having to leave my couch? Can I pay my friend back for that pizza last week with my mobile app? Can I search for and maybe secure a loan from the comfort of my couch and my laptop, or even my mobile phone? Can I check the balances or trade stocks from, so I see that really interesting and Hawaii has a very enthusiastic generation of people that have a big appetite for this kind of movement, so I see some real exciting times ahead in the state. I know that you have a team here locally that's really excited about what FinTech is going to bring to Hawaii. We've got a photo of your team here and maybe you can introduce them so that we notice and recognize them on the street, and that's your, you have a team of three? So there's three others locally, yeah, so Hawaii has been an amazing place for us to find great talent, and a lot of my colleagues talk about the 2% unemployment, but I've just been blessed and fortunate to find three amazing people and hopefully more to come, so there's Stacey who does operations a lot of our contracts, and we've got a busy sales pipeline, so Stacey's working on that. We have Patrick who came on board as our chief financial officer, and Patrick has a ton of experience in private equity and raising capital and things like that, and there's Ivy who's really been a lot of our backbone in supporting us on all kinds of projects, and she's often the face to invoices and so forth with our customers, so our customers are all over the world, Asia and the states and mainland, but they all know our Hawaii team quite well. Fantastic. We are going to take a short break, but when we come back, Shugunar has wide wings, and I'd love to hear more about your operations and different parts of the world, different parts of the United States, I think that'll be really exciting. We are going to take a short break. This is Business in Hawaii, and we'll see you back here shortly. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About, where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in, and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there, and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Welcome back. This is Business in Hawaii. Today, joining us is Brian Samson, co-founder of True North and true startup, entrepreneur, and local boy, because now you're going to raise your family here, and I'll tell you, your family's not going to let you leave. So you can bet on planting some roots here. I think that would be great. When we left, we were talking about True North. It's entering into Hawaii and how you're aligning with Hawaii's leadership and bringing tech and fintech to Hawaii. But we also know that you expanded across the water even further from Hawaii, but into Argentina. Tell me, what led you to Argentina? What is business? What is it like doing business in Argentina and how the connections come together? How do you connect San Francisco, Argentina, Hawaii, and make your team feel the culture of all of those places? Sure. Great question. Thank you. So when my co-founder, Alex, and I were looking at, and we had, the world was our oyster. We could have gone anywhere, and software development centers have been all across the world. They've been in India and China for a long time. Eastern Europe is becoming more popular as well, but we saw this hidden gem in South America, and in particular Argentina. And there were a couple of really interesting reasons kind of on the surface, and then one in particular that as you really scratched into it, it was like, wow. So on the surface, you look at the time zone. So if you're a Hawaii business and maybe you're offshoring to Asia or offshoring to even like New York or Eastern Europe, that time zone can get a little tough. But if you're a company in, say, Texas or California and you're outsourcing, you want to work with a company or engineers that are on your time zone. So just the way the map works, you've got a big overlap. And what actually helps that is Argentina has a very strong Spanish and Italian and also German influence. So they eat dinner very late. So I learned the hard way a couple of times, you know, I'll go out looking for a restaurant around 7 o'clock for dinner, and nothing's even open. So we're starving a couple of times. But around 10, 11 p.m., that's when the restaurants really start going, and it blew my mind. You'll see families with young kids come in around midnight just to start their dinner. But where that actually helps is you have almost this entire day of overlap, right? And then a couple other things that we really like, you know, number one, outside of Brazil, it's the largest country in Latin America. Both by size and population. So we've got some room to grow there, and in Brazil, of course, they speak Portuguese. But Argentina has been rated as the highest English fluency country in all of Latin America. So we have, you know, very easy conversations, and it's actually very conversational.  But education is subsidized by the government, healthcare, so quality of life is really good. Engineering talent is spectacular. But my favorite reason for Argentina, besides all that, and like the amazing food and culture and cuisine, is the country, to no fault of the population, but the country's experienced a very volatile economy for decade after decade after decade.   So this has created just a, you know, your average citizen of Argentina is very resilient, very adaptable, very flexible. They just know how to solve problems in a way that I think it would make me like my head spin, right? But they just, you know, it's a regular Tuesday for them, and our customers love their problem-solving skills. They sound agile, and in fact, we have a photo of your Argentina team. Big team. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that actually might be a little outdated. We're scratching about 80 today. So, yeah, in about three years, we're about 80 people now, and with the majority in the Buenos Aires office. So not only are you contributing to Hawaii's economy and our community by bringing jobs and efficiencies, technology efficiencies, you're doing that in other countries as well. And I think that's so commendable. When we spoke before the interview, we talked about leveraging a distributed team. Talk to me about the concept of distributed team. What does that mean? Sure. So, you know, I think there's still, there's a lot to be said for, you know, being in the same office and so forth, and that really, you know, drives your culture. But I think when you look at, like, your access to talent, and talent is everywhere today, right? When you look at your access to talent, you know, you start with this giant funnel, right, if you consider the world.  And then they have to be in my city and meet my bar. They have to, you know, meet my culture. They have to be available and looking. So now you've got this, what started with a really giant pool, this very, very tiny group to pull from, right? So we decided to look at that from an inverse direction, right? Our Hawaii team actually all works remotely, right?  But we, you know, we really found that, you know, people, they want to be trusted. They want to be treated like adults. They don't want to have somebody watching over the, you know, 905. You're five minutes late. They just want to get their work done, be treated like adults. And same thing in San Francisco. We do have an office there, but there's a lot of flexibility. And same thing in Argentina. There's a lot of flexibility for the team. It's really a results-driven environment. So if you can treat people like adults there, you can really widen your access to amazing talent. Now I won't say that it's easy, but we have used a lot of technology, especially we're a tech company. We've used a lot of technology to help us get there. So we have different software to track our project statuses. We tag each other. There's constant updates and email. You've got all these things that I'm sure our audience is aware of like Skype and Slack and Zoom and Monday.com and JIRA, you know, all these different tools that we're putting our notes and so forth. But there's also no substitute for a video conference, right? So we really try to take advantage of that, especially when you recognize how important nonverbal communication is. Especially when you're not in the same, you know, the same proximity. So again, it wasn't easy, but I think our team, as long as they're challenged, as long as they're working on projects that they like, it's really helped us get some of the best people out there. What I admire about you and the business that you're building is, because I have an HR background and I know you do as well, that what you've done with True North is really built company culture. Even if you are thousands of miles away, we have another picture of part of your Argentina team with some gifts from Hawaii. So maybe you're bringing some Hawaii into their lives and I think that's amazing, right? To be able to build a company with culture, even if you are thousands of miles away. Sure, yeah, we've really tried to bring a little ohana to Argentina, right? And they are three totally different places, but I think our Argentina team really appreciates the Hawaii spirit. Our Hawaii team really appreciates the San Francisco and the Argentina spirit. So there's a lot of passion in all three places and we've just really tried to prioritize teamwork and accountability and, you know, just a fun work environment and it's worked out really well so far. In the short time we have left, I think we have about a minute to go. Tell our viewers about startup businesses in Hawaii. What's the temperature for that? Yeah, sure. So I spent a long time with all these startups in San Francisco and as I come out here and I've spent time at the Blue Startups office and just talking to other entrepreneurs, it's really exciting. And with the way that the world has kind of democratized the ability for defined information, right? There's a good chance that whatever problem you're dealing with, someone somewhere in the world has not only dealt with it, but they've documented it. So all that is kind of wide open and then as you start to see more risk taking, you know, in Hawaii and then more access to capital and especially I've seen a bigger drive on that seed stage and angel stage of capital that can really get off the ground. So if I could leave any, you know, kind of last minute tips for entrepreneurs. Please do. The pitch, pitching investors is so excruciatingly difficult and, you know, brings up nerves and anxiety. But I would encourage them to try to push towards a definitive decision. A lot of times you'll hear a maybe and a maybe is kind of the worst thing that you want. You either want a yes or a no. So make sure that your assumptions are clear and what you're trying to do and how you think it will play out and then try to get that yes or no and you'll be on a really good track. Brian, I would love to have you back and, you know, we've run across entrepreneurs just like yourself to talk about those exciting tips for folks who are willing to venture into startup. We are out of time and I could go forever on this conversation but I really wanted to thank you for joining us. So excited to watch True North take off and watch your team grow and all the wonderful things that you're doing aligning with our leadership here. So thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. It was my pleasure. We are out of time but thanks again to Brian and True North for joining us and a huge thank you to the production staff. Happy holiday to our viewers. If you would like to be a guest on our show, please email your information to shows at thinktechhawaii.com. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at two o'clock and we look forward to seeing you here next week.