The UM Hurricanes football team draws an enthusiastic group of fans in the community, and among their greatest fans are four siblings of the Amit family: Aimee, Ariane, Alon, and Alexis. Although they are spread out across the country, they come back to South Florida to attend all of their favorite football team’s home games.

But the Amits’ most important support is for research conducted at the Miller School of Medicine. The Amit siblings have just completed a pledge of funds for cancer research that brings their total gift to $1 million in support of cancer research in the DeWitt Daughtry Family Department of Surgery.

In 2003 all four children each made their first pledges of $125,000 to the Department of Surgery to support the Alan Livingstone Chair in Surgical Oncology, now occupied by Leonidas G. Koniaris, M.D., associate professor of surgery, cell biology, and anatomy.

“We initially started the donations because of Herb and Susen Grossman. They are extremely close family friends,” says Ariane, noting that their friends made the inaugural gifts to establish the Livingstone Chair. “We all wanted to do something together because we felt that putting all this money jointly would make a bigger impact in some area, rather than giving a little here and a little there. This started as a sibling venture and will hopefully continue to be so.”

Continuing their generous support, the Amit siblings recently pledged an additional $125,000 each to go toward basic science research in the Department of Surgery. Their second gift of $500,000 will allow the Division of Surgical Oncology to enhance its basic science research.

“We are incredibly grateful to the Amits for their generous financial support,” says Alan S. Livingstone, M.D., professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery. “But we are also highly appreciative of their ongoing interest and enthusiasm in the research we are doing. In a society often focused on the desire for personal satisfaction, it is gratifying to find young adults so driven to help others and so excited about trying to find a cure for cancer.”