Ken Calvert is Gartner Group Professor in Network Engineering in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Kentucky.  He has been at the University of Kentucky since 1998.  From July 2007 through July 2013 he served as Department Chair.  From May 2016 through December 2019, he served as Division Director for the Division of Computer and Network Systems, in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the US National Science Foundation, where he oversaw a staff of 22 Program Officers and a total research budget exceeding $220 million.

From 1991 to 1997, Calvert was on the faculty of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  From 1979 to 1984 he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories in Holmdel, NJ.

Calvert was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012, "for contributions to internet topology and active networks".

Calvert's research has focused on design and implementation of Internet communication protocols, including multicast routing, programmable networks,  multicast security, and future Internet architecture.

Current areas of focus include the Internet's inter-domain routing ecosystem and new paradigms such as Information-Centric Networking.