Amena Karimyan

Amena Karimyan (born November 1, 1996 in Herāt) is an Afghan astronomer and women's rights activist. She is also a civil engineer and founder of the Kayhana Astronomical Group, an organization that encourages young women and women in the field of astronomy. She was ranked as one of the 100 most inspiring women in the world by BBC 100 Women in 2021.

Life Karimyan was born in the Afghan city of Herat in 1996 and she became interested in astronomy. She wanted to study astronomy but there were no places to study in Afghanistan so another course had to be chosen.

She graduated in civil engineering from Herat University. She then worked as an engineer on the United Nations (UN) UN-Habitat project. In 2018, Karimyan and Sohail Karimi founded the Kayhana Astronomical Group It was the only group of its type and it had 150 members The broken promise of her visa and the loss to Austria of not having her as a citizen was reported.

In 2022 her writing about women astronomers in Afghanistan was published in Nature Astronomy explaining how they needed support.