Dr. Brendan Weekes, a professor at the University of Hong Kong and University of Sydney, came to PUCRS and learned more about the research projects developed at the Brain Institute of RS. In the company of Prof. Dr. Lilian Hübner, he talked to Dr. Douglas Sato, Superintendent of Teaching, Research, Development and Innovation of BraIns, After that, he checked out the structure of the Institution, both the assistance and the basic research. He also visited the Preclinical Research Center, coordinated by researchers Gianina Venturin and Samuel Greggio.

Literacy has been one of Brendan Weekes’ areas of interest since he was a PhD student in the early 1990s. This work has resulted in psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies on acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia in bilinguals across alphabetical and non-alphabetical scripts, with focus on the BRIC nations.
He serves as the chief researcher in projects funded by Research Grants Council (RGC) in Hong Kong by the Chinese government (State Key Laboratory). He has been awarded funding from international organizations (NSF) to assist in expanding his work into bilateral bilingual speakers in Brazil, Cyprus, Greece, India, Italy, Mongolia, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.