Cleanup of a naval shipyard, safer playgrounds, telemedicine to rural areas and service as the "Isaac Asimov of India" earned four professors at UC Davis top honors this week for their extraordinary service to the public. Daniel Chang, Seymour Gold, Thomas Nesbitt and V. Rao Vemuri received 1997 Distinguished Public Service Awards from their UC Davis colleagues in an annual campus event. Chang, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, quickly mobilized UC Davis resources to retrain more than 70 mechanical, civil, electrical and chemical engineers for cleanup of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Gold, a professor of environmental planning and a nationally recognized authority on park and recreation planning and management, was one of the first park professionals to call attention to the under-use of city parks and was key to creating landmark legislation. Nesbitt, an associate professor of family practice and medical director of UC Davis' Telemedicine Program, has made significant contributions to improve health-care delivery to various underserved populations in California. Vemuri, professor of applied science, is known to some as the "Isaac Asimov of Andhra (India)." He has waged a career-long campaign to popularize science in his native India where, he says, science and technology are accessible to that 2 percent of the population who can read and write English. Web release, http://www-news.ucdavis.edu/PubComm/.