The Team
Small team. Deep expertise. Built to solve one problem well.
Bacterial ecology, graph-based data architecture, and 30 years of opening markets in Western Canada. The inventors are building the company.
Jeff Violo
COO
30 years of opening markets that do not exist yet. Five times the first hire in Western Canada: colocation, telecom, cybersecurity, cloud data management, and now cleantech. Built Luminous’s 195+ stakeholder network, commercial strategy, and business operations from the ground up.
Former Canadian National Freestyle Ski Team member.
Dr. Shawn Lewenza
Co-Founder, Chief Science Officer
Invented the biosensor. Faculty at Athabasca University and the University of Calgary. His research group isolated the bacteria from Alberta tailings ponds that became the Luminous platform. Published in ACS Synthetic Biology (September 2024). Led the field validation at Imperial Oil’s Kearl GROW Engineered Wetland over the 2024-2025 treatment season.
Greg Saunders
Chief Technology Officer
Built the Graph Context Engine from the ground up. 30 years of enterprise systems integration applied to one problem: connecting water chemistry data with operational variables. The GCE exists because Greg saw that the data silo problem could not be solved with rows and columns.
What We Are Honest About
HRMS is the gold standard for naphthenic acid analysis. We complement it. We do not replace it. Our biosensor measures biological effect. HRMS measures molecular structure. Both are needed.
Our technology is specific to naphthenic acids. It is not a general water quality platform.
Bioaugmentation (using engineered bacteria for active remediation) is an area of research. It is not something we offer today.
Commitment to Respectful Engagement
Oil sands water treatment affects communities whose lands and waters have carried decades of impact. Technology alone does not build trust. We believe transparent, continuous data is part of how trust gets built, but the form that takes needs to be shaped by the communities it is meant to serve. That means listening first.
Schedule a Briefing
Meet the team and discuss how transparent monitoring can work for your operations.