Long before Exactech Inc. went global, co-founder and Gator Engineer Gary Miller called Gainesville home.

GAINESVILLE — Exactech, a Gainesville-based company that develops and markets orthopedic implant devices and related surgical instruments, was named in October to Forbes' list of The 200 Best Small Companies for 2008.

The multi-million dollar company, which ranked No. 105 on Forbes' list, was assessed for sales growth, return on equity and market performance. Exactech was recognized for different reasons last October when The Wall Street Journal and Winning Workplaces named it a 2007 Top Small Workplace for its treatment of employees.

"It's always nice to be recognized as a good company, and further to be recognized as a good place to work," said co-founder Gary Miller, executive vice president of research and development.

Exactech was founded in 1985, when Miller teamed with Bill Petty, an orthopedic surgeon and Chairman of Orthopedics at Shands, and Petty's wife to develop products for patients suffering from joint diseases, such as arthritis.

Their first product, a cemented hip, was sold in 1987, and by their third year they began to make a profit. They quickly moved from simply developing and marketing products to manufacturing them as well — many at their Gainesville facility.

Today, Exactech supplies hospitals and physicians worldwide with an extensive line of orthopedic implant devices, related surgical instruments and allograft and synthetic biologic materials. There are hip, knee and shoulder systems, as well as bone cement products that either partially or entirely replace patients' damaged joints and stimulate new bone growth.

Exactech went public in 1996, which is when Miller retired from the university to work at the company full-time. Today, Exactech markets its products in the United States and Australia, as well as 30 markets in Europe, Asia and Latin America.

"I remember when this company was first starting out," said Erik Sander, director of industry programs at UF's College of Engineering. "The way it has grown — building on its own product lines and in a way that's friendly to its employees — is really incredible."

Miller, who received his bachelor's and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UF, became interested in biomechanics after he started working in a fledgling biomechanics lab as an undergraduate.

Miller had been specializing in machine design, but quickly switched to biomechanics once he realized "the body is the ultimate machine." However, UF's program was so young in 1970, the students created their own curriculum, said Miller, who remembers his professor arranging for them to take an anatomy class.

At the time, MIT was blazing the trail for biomechanics, so that's where Miller went for his master's — only to be recruited back to Florida for his Ph.D. He went on to accept a position as assistant, then associate, professor of orthopedic surgery and director of research and biomechanics at UF's College of Medicine, where he worked for 17 years.

"I've spent my academic and professional career in Gainesville," said Miller. "It's been wonderful. Being in a community that has a preeminent medical school, a preeminent engineering school and preeminent veterinary school all in the same place really allowed me and others like me to have the collegial contacts to develop a career that was barely heard of in 1970."

Today, Miller remains connected to the University. He's been an adjunct associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine's Small Animal Surgical Sciences Division since 1982, and he was appointed as an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering in 1995. He also serves on advisory boards for MAE and the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering.

"The College of Engineering and UF has afforded me opportunities well beyond what I thought I would have," said Miller. "I'm a Gator through and through."