About the founder

Dr Iya Whiteley is a mother of two children and her other jobs are the Space Psychologist, Cognitive Engineer, Korean Medicine Practitioner and Trainer of Sam Won Dong moving and healing meditation. Iya is the bestselling author on Amazon of the Cosmic Baby Books for newborn babies and Designer of EARTH DESIGN series. Iya setup the Cosmic Baby Academy to assist in communication and development of the nurturing connection between parents and babies and parents to be and their yet to be born babies.

Iya is fascinated by human unusual experiences, and how it affects our lives, and how we perform and adapt in extreme environments. Iya is in constant search of methods to improve our development and performance at any stage of life. Where possible through personal experience, Iya is discovering tools, to support all aspects of our well-being with minimum resources whether living far away from any help in deep space or in remote regions in Earth. Hence a multitude of skills are being gained along the lifepath on Earth.

At 20, Iya trained with Prof Park Jae Woo in a unique Korean family lineage medicine system, followed by training as a Clinical Psychologist and Human Machine Interface designer. She designs both equipment and training programmes and tools to improve the performance of highly trained safety-critical professionals, including military pilots, astronauts, cosmonauts and surgeons.

Iya advised the UK Space Agency, worked at the European Astronaut Centre (European Space Agency) in Cologne, Germany and collaborated with NASA and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City, Russia.

Since having her own children, using her professional knowledge designing for astronauts, Iya now designs visual books, training courses for parents-to-be and those with newborn babies and apps for babies. She is able to tap into their developmental potential and give them the best possible start on our unique planet Earth. These unique EARTH DESIGN books and apps:

• Improve concentration through stimulating and captivating images.

• Stimulate further learning and discovery.

• Create new pathways in the brain through learning to focus and to trace visual patterns.

• Acquire early life skills required for successful learning and interaction.

Iya is a public speaker for TV, radio and science programmes. Recently, she was the Space Psychologist demonstrating astronaut selection on the BBC Science TV series: BBC Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? with Canadian Astronaut and ISS Commander Chris Hadfield and Dr Kevin Fong.