Three days after Carnegie Mellon University announced a $25 million gift from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, it has won another large grant -- more than $22 million from The Heinz Endowments.

"It's been a great week," said university President Jared Cohon after the Heinz gift was announced yesterday.

On Monday, the $25 million became the largest foundation gift the university has ever received. Its largest single gift remains $55 million given in 2004 by Wall Street investor David A. Tepper and his wife, Marlene, for the business school.

The Mellon money is aimed at making Carnegie Mellon a bigger player in the life sciences by creating a Life Sciences Competitiveness Fund.

The Heinz money will go toward a new School of Information Systems Management and aid the green chemistry, robotics and computer science programs.

Teresa Heinz, chairman of the endowments board, said, "This significant level of support for Carnegie Mellon points out the degree to which we believe Pittsburgh's universities hold the key for moving the region forward in several important areas."

Of the money, $13 million in new support and previously approved grants will help to increase the endowment of a new college, which will include the information systems management school and the existing H.J. Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management. The money will help in hiring faculty and renovating facilities.

Another $8.5 million in new and previously approved grants will help boost the endowment and expand programs in green chemistry, which works to reduce pollution.

Both amounts will be paid out over the next seven years as part of Carnegie Mellon's capital campaign.

"This is not just a general gift to a university capital campaign. It is the result of a considerable effort working with Carnegie Mellon officials to choose programs that best fit our strategies for getting the benefits of technology and research into communities, for environmental protection and for sustainable economic development," said Ms. Heinz.

Just as the Mellon foundation had previously given to Carnegie Mellon, The Heinz Endowments have a history of giving. The Heinz list includes more than $1 million in the past five years for projections in the university's Center for Technology Transfer and $12 million in 1996 for endowed professorships.

The Heinz school was named in 1991 to honor the late Sen. John Heinz, not as the result of a monetary gift.

Of the latest announcement, Dr. Cohon said, "This gift is a tremendous statement by them about the belief that Carnegie Mellon makes a difference in our community."

With the new information school, Mark Wessel, dean of the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management, said a new field will be created.

He said there are some information schools -- arising from restructured library science schools and/or computer science -- but this one will combine technology and social sciences, including economics and organizational behavior. It also will combine the faculty for information systems and policy and management.

The new school may open as soon as the first of the year.

Another $650,000 is aimed at helping the university's Field Robotics Center to develop innovations from an international robotics competition into commercial uses. A grant of $400,000 for computer science will focus on the field of human-centered computing, which is working toward making huge sets of data more usable.

The money for Carnegie Mellon is among 219 grants totaling $45.4 million approved by the endowments board at a meeting that ended yesterday. Counting grants announced in May, the endowments have made more than $83 million in awards this year.

In the latest batch, a $1.75 million award for a Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership loan fund will help to provide gap financing to owners of smaller buildings who fix up vacant upper floors for moderate-income housing.

A grant of $1.3 million was approved for the Sarah Heinz House, a youth development center founded in 1913 by the Heinz family.

Pittsburgh Public Schools won a grant of $825,000, of which $500,000 will be spent on a program aimed at black children. It will bring artists into several schools to work with students on art that reflects their culture and ethnicity.

Some of the other grants went to a variety of cultural and performing arts organizations.