He received his bachelor's degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology from Harvard University. While at Harvard, he studied the biology of aging using yeast as a model system in the laboratory of David Sinclair. Dr. Lamming then joined the laboratory of David Sabatini at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research, where he transitioned to studying the biology of aging in mammalian model systems.