Leif was born in Germany and grew up in Switzerland. He studied Interdisciplinary Sciences at ETH Zürich for both his Bachelor's and Master's, working at the intersection of chemistry, biology, and computer science. 

He has been active in research since his second semester as an undergraduate, on topics ranging from nuclear fusion to greenhouse gas sensing and microfluidic wound diagnostics. 

For his Master's thesis, advised by Jim Collins at MIT and the Broad Institute, he developed generative machine learning models that led to the discovery of two novel small-molecule antibiotics active against drug-resistant bacteria in mouse models. 

At the Generative Biology Institute, he will work with Jérôme Zürcher and Michael Bronstein on new computational and experimental ways to control biology from the ground up.