As a child Jamal Lewis always knew that he was leaning towards a career in the science field as he performed excellently in Mathematics and Sciences, and while initially he concluded that he would become a medical doctor a light bulb moment came late in high school as he was watching a CBS 60 Minutes feature on tissue engineering.
In that programme, scientists had taken cells from a mouse and grown an ear on its back. Lewis said he found the entire thing fascinating. His fascination with biomedical engineering might have become clearer then, but he was always interested in how the immune system worked because of the initial impact of HIV/AIDS in Guyana and also the impact of diabetes in his own family.