most well-rounded: Salena Prakah-Asante

MILA G. BARRY

When Salena Prakah-Asante ’22 walks into the Harvard Art Museums for our interview, she’s wearing a vibrant yellow coat and a smile to match. We greet each other, and I quickly learn it’s been a busy week: she’s one day away from turning in her thesis. This report on using computer vision to assess how individuals do tai chi is the final step toward her Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering joint degree. After finishing the degree this semester, she plans to pursue a range of artistic and creative interests in the spring.

During that time, Prakah-Asante plans to learn two new instruments, participate in dance competitions, and nurture a vast array of other interests. It’s a remarkably varied itinerary; completely divergent from her STEMheavy concentration and fitting for the person nominated as the Most Well-Rounded student in the senior class.

From a young age, Prakah-Asante recalls, she’s had a desire to explore many realms of inquiry and expression.

“For the most part, my hobbies and activities were things I’ve been developing from as early as elementary school,” she says.

Art — which she describes as her “medicine” — and especially fashion are among her longest-standing interests. She started sewing with her mom when she was eight and made her first garment (a Hunger Games Halloween costume) at age 10. In high school and college, she’s made her own formalwear for events like senior prom and Black Legacy Ball. Over Thanksgiving, she plans to design a streetwear collection. And over the past few years, she’s served as both fashion director and executive producer of Eleganza — an annual student-run fashion, dance, and music show.

When I ask which designers inspire her work, PrakahAsante cites Alexander McQueen, but she explains that her inspiration comes mostly from experiences in her own life. She shows me one design inspired by a childhood favorite book, “The Secret Garden”; another done as a project for an African and African American Studies class. Uniqueness is important to her.

As we look at pictures of her work, she reveals that she does her own photography and videography, as well as editing and production. From design to execution to modeling and photography, she often executes every step of her creative process herself.

She’s so invested in fashion that she says it feels almost like a second concentration.

When I ask how she did narrow down her concentration options, Prakah-Asante explains that she’s liked engineering for a long time, but she chose to study computer science because she found it difficult.

“Being well-rounded for me [means that] if I see something as a huge weakness, I want to improve. So I was like, ‘what better time to try to get better at [computer science] than by studying it as a whole ’nother