A technique is proposed to inversely determine the material constants of laminated cylindrical shells from transient dynamic displacement responses obtained at only one receiving point on the outer surface of shells. An analytical-numerical method is used for forward calculation that relates the material constants to the displacement responses. A uniform crossover micro-genetic algorithm (uniform µGA) is employed as the inverse operator to determine the material constants of the laminated cylindrical shells. Examples are presented to demonstrate this inverse technique for material characterization of laminated shells. The robustness of the technique to the effect of measurement noise is also investigated. Satisfactory identification results have shown the effectiveness of the present inverse technique as well as its robustness to the given noise added to the input displacement responses.