Adair studies approaches to evaluate the resilience of transportation systems, agencies, and users through capabilities such as flexibility and adaptive capacity. She has worked on research projects focused on prioritizing transportation investment based on road, bridge, and culvert vulnerability; rail and transit system resilience assessment; and engineering education. Her research has been published in Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, Smart and Resilient Transportation, and Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board.  Adair is completing her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Adair also holds a M.S. in Civil Engineering and a Master's in City and Regional Planning from Georgia Tech. 

Adair won a grant from the National Center of Sustainable Transportation (NCST) in August 2023 to develop an integrated framework for incorporating resilience and sustainability into rail infrastructure management and another NCST grant in 2024 to quantify adaptive capacity and other resilience capabilities for transportation infrastructure. Adair has also won two USDOT Dwight D. Eisenhower Fellowships for her research.