Gengkai Hu is currently the Chair Professor of solid mechanics at Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). He received his Ph.D. in mechanics and materials from Ecole Centrale de Paris (France) in 1991 and spent two years at the same university as a postdoctoral research associate before joining BIT. He has written or coauthored more than 170 papers in refereed journals, and received the Award of National Outstanding Youth Scientist by National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2003, and National Outstanding Teacher Award in 2004. He and his research group led some of the early works on elastic metamaterials. His current research interests include: dynamic homogenization of composite materials, metamaterials for controlling elastic wave propagation.