Karsten Eric Braaten was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota on October 5, 1970 to Lois
(Fisher) Braaten (Head as of 1982) and Karsten Ole Braaten.
A Celebration of Life service will be held on what would have been his 55th birthday, Sunday,
October 5. Pizza will be served at Noon, immediately following the regular I0:30 a.m. Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship meeting at 3226 Maine Prairie Rd. St. Cloud, MN with the Celebration of
Life service starting at 1:00 p.m. followed by cake and ice cream.
Karsten attended St. Cloud State University's Campus Lab School and then Technical High School,
graduating in 1988 at the top of his class of 425 students after completing 4 years of high school
in only 3 years. While in junior and senior high school, he participated in the University of
Minnesota's Talented Youth Mathematics Program (UMTYMP), completing 30 math credits including
Calculus and Linear Analysis.
He was a Red Cross Certified Life Guard and a member of the Tech High Swim Team and lettered in
Music, playing saxophone (band) and bassoon (orchestra). During his high school summers, he
participated in the All City Marching Band. He studied piano with Olive Bernard and Paul Wirth and
earned a green belt in karate from the Gustafson's Karate School.
In addition to traveling to marching band concert events in such places as Florida; in 1987 he also
traveled to Germany with the Concordia Language Village Travel Abroad program.
While studying at the University of Minnesota as a National Merit Scholar as well as a University
of Minnesota Presidential Scholar, he served as a teaching assistant for the UMTYMP program and he
was a participant and tutor for the University of Minnesota IT Honors program. In 1992, he earned a
B.S. in Physics and Astrophysics with a Mathematics minor, graduating Cum Laude.
He was a Rice University (Houston, TX) Graduate Fellow and, by 1997, he had earned his M.S. in
Space Physics having also completed all of his Ph.D. course work and qualifying exams. As a
Graduate Research Assistant, using Rice University's radiation belt computer simulation, he worked
on numeric modeling and derived, coded, and tested physics models, comparing results to analytic
theory and data. He also held the part-time position of night-time DJ for the Rice University radio
station, KTRU (96. 1FM), making friends with the student fans who phoned into his night-time show.
Appropriately enough, Sammy the Owl is the Rice University mascot.
In the summer of 1995, he was selected by the Texas Space Grant Consortium to fly a Zero-Gravity
fluid mechanics experiment aboard the zero gravity aircraft NASA 930. (Frequently known as "The
Vomit Comet.") He successfully designed, built, tested and flew the experiment as part of a
student/faculty team, subsequently presenting the results and experiences at various talks and
conferences.
He also was taking flying lessons and he did numerous recreational parachute jumps. After his
studies at Rice University, he was employed as a Software Engineer at Visual
Numerics, Inc. and Schlumberger-GeoQuest, Ltd. until he joined the Engineering Staff at United
Space Alliance (a subsidiary of NASA) where his major tasks involved Space shuttle avionics
simulator development, for which he was honored with a Space Act Award, and the development of a
distributed C++ application for astronaut flight training and rapid display prototyping.
When be ventured to California during the dot.com rage, be was employed as a Software Engineer or
Consultant for a variety of companies including RateStream.com, Xigo, Inc., Maxis/ Electronic Arts,
The Sims Online, Opt4 Derivatives, Inc., Amaranth, LLC., and The Ziba Group Consulting: Visa /
Innovant.
Then he made his home in New York where he was employed by Morgan Stanley and Schonfeld Securities, Lab 49, and ZocDoc.
He died in May 2025 from complications of his adult-onset epilepsy condition.
Survivors include his mother, Lois Head, and his father, Karsten Ole Braaten (Nancy) as well as maternal and paternal extended family members.
Arrangements provided by John G Crawford Memorial Services LLC