The idea of combining electromagnetism into space time field isn't exactly new; Weyl's theory of the combined gravitational-electromagnetic field [0], proposed by Hermann Weyl, some 100 years ago, did just that.
Yes, and the paper the article is based on does mention Weyl:
> The earliest attempts can be reasonably traced back to the German physicist Gustav Mie (1868-1957) and the Finnish physicist Gunnar Nordström (1881-1923). Fruitful efforts came, for example, from David Hilbert (1862-1943), Hermann Weyl (1885-1955), Theodor Kaluza (1885-1954), Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) and of course also from Albert Einstein (1879-1955). It is less well-known that, for example, Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) had such inclinations as well, see [1]. For a thorough historical review, see [2].
[0]: http://www.weylmann.com/weyltheory.pdf