By the late 1990s, the University of California at Irvine had already embarked on a plan to expand its biomedical-research activities -- well timed to catch a wave of money coming from the National Institutes of Health.

As a result, the university's grant money from the NIH rose significantly, to $95.9-million in 2002, from $48.6-million in 1998. It was one of the largest percentage increases of any institution with at least that much in NIH funds in 1998.

University officials cite several factors behind their success. Before 1998, the university, which has a medical school, had been developing plans to increase the profile of its research, which lagged behind that of research heavyweights in the California system, like the University of California at San Francisco.

Since 1995, Irvine's medical school has recruited more than 75 members to a research faculty that now totals 175. The University of California system offered an early retirement plan in the early 1990s that was accepted by many senior faculty members in biomedical sciences. The university emphasized replacing them with researchers with proven talents for landing NIH grants, says Thomas C. Cesario, dean of the medical school.

The institution also went on a building spree, completing four new laboratory buildings since 1998, with a fifth under way.

In addition, the university has focused on some areas of research where the NIH was putting new money. One area was bioinformatics, a field that uses computers to analyze genetic sequences and other large sets of biological data. The university had created a doctoral program in bioinformatics in 1999. And in 2002, Irvine won a five-year NIH grant worth $4.3-million to train more scientists in that field.

Because the Irvine campus "is relatively young and in a phase of growth," says Pierre Baldi, director of the university's Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics, which received the training grant, "we can move quickly into new areas."