Cameron had planned to study medicine at university, but after volunteering in hospitals he realised that he did not want to become a medical doctor. He studied chemistry at Howard University and graduated in 1987. During his undergraduate research he noticed that physicians were not ready to deal with viruses. The viruses that Cameron studied included the rhinovirus, the common cold and coxsackievirus. Cameron moved to Case Western Reserve University for his doctoral studies, which he completed in 1993. He remained at Case Western as a postdoctoral researcher, before being appointed a National Institutes of Health fellow at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State).
