to interact with their peers from industrially advanced countries without permanently leaving their own countries. Establishing the world class physics research institute, roughly equivalent to CERN, in Pakistan was a dream of Dr. Abdus Salam who initiated the establishment of PINSTECH. Together with dr. I. H. Usmani, Salam initiated the deal with the United States to established the P in Nilore and gave its first directorship to nuclear physicist Dr. Rafi Muhammad Chaudhry of the Government College University, Lahore (GCU). For sometime, the PINSTECH became affiliated with the Quaid-i-Azam University in 1967, bearing some special materials testing. Soon, the scientists from Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Quaid-i-Azam University joined the PINSTECH to engage research in physics. After the war with India in 1971, President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto orchestrated to established an efforts towards a nuclear deterrence loosely based on Manhattan Project of the 1940s. Salam took over the operations of PINSTECH institute to oversee the research and development, and its eventual production of the weapons in 1972. In 1970s, the PINSTECH was an epicenter and a focal point for Pakistani scientists to conduct research in physics where the basic and applied science research in PINSTECH picked up its speed, when Pakistani scientists feared that India was rapidly developing an atomic bomb. The facility continues its expansion in Nilore by the Corps of Engineers. As Nilore became restricted and secret city, the site was one of the integral site for the nuclear weapons research. In its initial years, the PINSTECH activities were directed towards reprocessing the civilian-grade plutonium to military-grade plutonium. The worked carried out on 20 different laboratories and facilities ran under Munir Ahmad Khan in 1970s. Its first division, the New Labs was dedicated to the production of the weapon grade plutonium of 239Pu. In 1983, Nuclear Physics Division working under Ishfaq Ahmad successfully produced the 239Pu, a weapon grade plutonium. Throughout the formulative year, the scientists and engineers at PINSTECH carried out technologically advanced research at the PINSTECH. On May 30, 1998, the PAEC scientists and engineers had performed the second nuclear test—codename Chagai-II— of a fissionable device, and the device's weapon grade plutonium was produced at the New Labs. The research reactors at the institute were last upgraded by Munir Ahmad Khan — chairman of PAEC at that time — as he led both Electronics Division (ED) and Nuclear Engineering Division (NED) in 1989.