Stephen E. Ralph and his research team The Georgia Institute of Technology has been awarded funding to lead a new Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program (IUCRC) in Integrated Photonics. Integrated photonics have become a key enabling technology in many commercial, defense and scientific applications such as fiber communications, data centers, RF analog links, quantum computing, and communications and sensing. Defense and aerospace applications of integrated photonics present many challenges for researchers, however they provide enormous opportunities for advancements in the fields. The EPICA IUCRC was first proposed by faculty of the Georgia Electronic Design Center (GEDC), a center within the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech. The GEDC is a cross-disciplinary research center focused on the development of high-speed electronic and photonics components and signal processing to achieve revolutionary system performance. With renowned expertise in advanced photonics research, more than 15 active faculty and over 100 graduate and undergraduate students, the team is poised for success.