Kevin Heaslip became Director of the Center for Transportation Research and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on July 1, 2022. He previously was a Professor, CACI Faculty Fellow, and a Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Fellow at Virginia Tech. He was the interim director and associate director of the Information Systems Laboratory of the Hume Center for National Security and Technology. Heaslip was an Appointed Member of the Resilient America Roundtable of the National Academy of Science from 2014 to 2020.

Heaslip has been awarded over $25 million in research grants and contracts from federal governments, state governments, and industry as an expert in transportation engineering, transportation technology, and critical infrastructure cybersecurity. He has over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and technical reports on the topics of transportation engineering, connected and automated vehicles, transportation big data, and transportation cybersecurity. Heaslip received a BS and MS in Civil Engineering from Virginia Tech and a PhD in Civil Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.