José Celso Freire Junior is an associate provost for international affairs at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP) and an associate professor in computer science at São Paulo State University, UNESP in Brazil.

Previously, he served as president of FAUBAI—the Brazilian Association for International Education. As such, he has participated as a panelist to several international events like Going Global, EAIE, AIEA, CAIE and NAFSA.  He was formerly head of the department of electrical engineering in the School of Engineering at UNESP Guaratinguetá and coordinator of the undergraduate program. 

He graduated from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Electrical Engineering. His scholarly articles have been published more than 60 times in scientific journals and he has nearly 1,000 ResearchGate reads and 75 citations. He also has been published in Times Higher Education.

He has a master's degree in computer science from the University of São Paulo and a doctoral degree in software engineering from the Université de Grenoble I (Joseph Fourier University) in France.