Introduction

It is a great pleasure for me to announce that the 2013 Raimondi Award was assigned to Dr. Ji Yeoun Lee for her important research work on secondary neurulation in chick embryos aimed at providing a physiopathogenetic interpretation of a still poorly understood spinal malformation, namely the terminal myelocystocele. Dr. Lee (Fig. 1) is an assistant research professor and a Ph.D. candidate of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Seoul National University Children’s Hospital. Her research, presented in this special annual issue devoted to spinal dysraphism, was conducted under the guidance of the most eminent experts in the fields, such as Prof. Dachling Pang and Kyu-Chang Wang.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Dr. Ji Yeoun Lee (right) and Prof. A.J. Raimondi (left)

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The main goal of the Raimondi Award, instituted by the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery to recognize Prof. Raimondi’s continuous promotion of the young neurosurgeon, was to stimulate the new generations to consider our journal the most appropriate forum to present and to discuss the results of their investigations among the international pediatric neurosurgical community. In this direction, the paper by Dr. Lee and her co-workers appears to fulfil all the criteria necessary for the award: it is innovative and stimulating. Hopefully, its publication will stimulate further submissions in the upcoming year by our young colleagues.