A day after President Ram Nath Kovind signed off on the appointment of Vice-Chancellors of 12 central universities, sources have claimed that Dr Basuthkar Jagadeeshwar Rao has been appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad, Dr Tankeshwar Kumar has been appointed as the new VC of the University of Haryana and Dr Battu Satyanarayana as the VC of Central University of Karnataka.

Dr BJ Rao is currently a Senior professor, and the chair of Biology and dean faculty at IISER, Tirupati. Before this, he was a senior professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, Mumbai and the head of Mechanism of Genome Dynamics and Cellular Adaptations Laboratory, TIFR. He specialises in the molecular basis of genome dynamics, computational biology of genomes and protein active sites, cellular physiology and metabolism, to which he made fundamental contributions.

Dr Rao graduated from Nizam College and went on to complete his MSc from Osmania University, Hyderabad. He then completed his PhD from Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore in Biochemistry. He did his post-doctoral work at Yale Medical School where he served as a research scientist for about seven years. He then returned to India and started working at TIFR in various capacities, from being a reader to associate professor and a chairperson.

Dr Tankeshwar Kumar is the current VC of Guru Jambeshwar University Science and Technology, Hisar, Harayana. Dr Satyanarayana is a professor in Osmania University's Chemistry Department.