For the eighth year in a row, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is the nation's top earner of federal biomedical research funding. According to figures just released by the National Institutes of Health for fiscal year 1999, Hopkins scientists were awarded more than $255 million in competitive grants. Most of that--around $227 million, or 89 percent--went directly to support basic or clinical research.

The FY '99 figure reflects a more than 13 percent increase in funding over last year.

"This distinction reflects the outstanding creativity, hard work and dedication that our faculty bring to the biomedical services," says Edward D. Miller, dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine ranked No. 2 at more than $238 million. Rounding out the top five were the schools of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis; the University of California, San Francisco; and Yale University.