Ken Calvert was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He received the Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979, the M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1980, and the Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin in 1991. From 1979 to 1984 he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. From 1991 to 1998 he was a faculty member in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.

Ken Calvert married Tricia Managan in 1984. They have two children, Scott (born in 1990) and Craig (born in 1993).