Cenedese's father, Antonio Cenedese, is also a fluid dynamics researcher at
Sapienza University of Rome, and as a child, she became fascinated by the motion of water in his experimental tanks. She earned a
laurea in
environmental engineering from Sapienza University in 1995, and completed a Ph.D. in applied mathematics and
theoretical physics at the
University of Cambridge in 1998, under the supervision of
Paul Linden. She came to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1998 as a postdoctoral scholar working with John A. Whitehead. She remained there for the rest of her career, becoming an assistant scientist in 2000 and obtaining a permanent research staff position in 2004. She was promoted to senior scientist in 2015. At Woods Hole, she established an exchange program for Italian students to visit, and has been active in mentoring women in oceanography. Since 2015, she has also held an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering of the
University of Canterbury in New Zealand. ==Recognition==