The Technical Univerisity of Delft and Leiden University had enjoyed a long and close collaboration before founding a new university course, Life Science & Technology, in 1999. It was in this same year that the study association, appropriately named LIFE, began organising its first activities. This was done under the leadership of a number of senior students from the courses Chemical Engineering in Delft and Chemistry in Leiden. With an initial 30 members, which included all the students following the course at the time as well as a number of special members, the first get-togethers, excursions and study trip were organised. In order to help prepare the prospective students for their new venture as LST students, an introduction-weekend committee was set up to organise a weekend full activities with the aim of getting the students to know each other, their new home-cities, the study as well as the association.

After one year, the association was ready to be run by a new board; it included the first active LST students. These members were initiated into the board on the 11^th of September 2000 and by the 13^th of December 2000 LIFE was run by a board comprised of only LST students. From there on the association has continued to grow as did the number of committees. The variety of activities also expanded to include diverse get-togethers as well as barbeques, lunches and study trips to Boston, America, Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain.  LIFE is also involved in other activities such as the sale of books (with 15% student discount on books from Selexyz, for more information see ‘Education’) and lab coats, the evaluation of the quality of education and building a ‘exam-bundle’, in which old exam papers can be found for exam preparation.

After almost 10 years of existence, LIFE can be considered a fully fledged study association. Though not the biggest association, LIFE keeps growing every year and with a devoted full-time board, the association has much to offer both national and international LST students. Both fun and educational activities are organised on a regular basis, sometimes even in cooperation with sister associations from Leiden and Delft. Social get-togethers are organised every two weeks, LST associated lectures are held periodically as are excursions to various companies, there are study trips within the Netherlands as well as in the rest of Europe and the world, there is a yearbook, a special day is organised to introduce parents to LST, a magazine (the Vision of LIFE) is released 5 times a year and much, much more. The universities also acknowledge the importance of study association and the work done within its committees, for this reason funds have been made available in order to reward members of committees which are much more time consuming.

All these activities are organised by the committees (listed under ‘Commitees’), all of the 500 LIFE members of LIFE are able to sign up to take part in our committees. Each committee is coordinated and guided by one of the five board members.

LIFE is currently being run by its 12^th board: