The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore, has a new director. Hassan Annegowda Ranganath, vice-chancellor, Bangalore University (BU) will take over the charges today from NAAC's acting director, S Ravichandra Reddy. The post of NAAC's director had been lying vacant since V S Prasad's tenure ended in February, 2008.

An established researcher in 'Genetics: speciation and evolution,' Ranganath is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Science. He had taken over as the 15th full-time vice-chancellor of BU in May 2006. Ranganath was short-listed for the post by a three-member search committee headed by Goverdhan Mehta, former director of Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), Bangalore.

When asked about his immediate plans for NAAC and about the issues of forgeries and anonymous letters, Ranganath stated: "First, I would like to take stock of things and only then I will be able to comment. It would be premature and wrong on my part to comment before taking over the charges. But yes, I would take stock of the situation and then decide."

A specialist in genetics, molecular biology and evolution of drosophila, he has many research papers to his name, including Nanoscale organisation of hedgehog is essential for long-range signalling, Introgressive hybridisation and evolution of a novel protein phenotype: glue protein profiles in the nasuta-albomicans complex of drosophila and Molecular phylogeny of the nasuta subgroup of Drosophila based on 12S rRNA, 16S rRNA and CoI mitochondrial genes, RAPD and ISSR polymorphisms, among others.