Friction selected for the Monash AI DeepTech Hackcelerator
Dora Velenczei presenting on behalf of the Friction team at the Monash Innovation Summit, 7 May 2026.
On 7 May 2026, Friction was selected for the Monash AI DeepTech Hackcelerator. The Hackcelerator is an internal accelerator programme that supports early-stage research projects through to deployment, and the project is now a priority focus for 2026.
Selection followed a presentation at the Monash Innovation Summit delivered by Dora Velenczei on behalf of the team. The presentation outlined the assessment problem the project is addressing and the three-layer architecture used to address it: a Task Assistant inside a familiar AI workspace; a Companion Peer that observes the student-and-AI interaction without surveilling the student; and a Friction Report that summarises the interaction for the educator on submission.
What the conversations confirmed
The conversations around the pitch were as useful as the pitch itself. Across faculty, programme leads, and policy researchers, a single theme came up repeatedly: assessment in the age of generative AI is not working well, and no consistent solution has emerged. The concern was shared by people working in different disciplines and at different institutions, which gave the team additional confidence that Friction is addressing a real and widely held gap rather than a local problem.
What comes next
The Hackcelerator provides the structure for the work that follows: pilot agreements, data and ethics review, and the engineering required to take a hackathon prototype to a system that can be deployed inside a university. Further updates will be posted here as the work progresses.